I spend a lot of time on social media—Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There's value here; for example, I "know" many people only through these media, and I much appreciate what I've learned from them. For example, I know hardly any linguists IRL, but I follow many on Twitter, and it's great.
But even I can tell that I overdo it. It's a time suck, and it's an easy way to procrastinate when I need to be doing, you know, work. ("While this documentation is building, I'll just check Twitter quick-like.")
More insidiously, too much social media starts making me cranky. And when I get cranky, I do unfortunate things, like respond in pissy ways to innocent posts by other, nicer people. Or, gah, I give in to the temptation to respond to morons and their idiotic political opinions, a no-win situation if ever there was one.
So I decided recently to implement what I'm calling Asocial Sundays. Between midnight on Saturday night and midnight on Sunday night, I don't visit any social media sites, period.
This is a new experiment, but I can see some benefits already. Not having the option of social media redirects my attention to more productive things. If I'm sitting at my desk and finish some task—paying bills, say—I don't just mindlessly switch to FB or Twitter to see what's up. Instead, I might actually get up from my desk and wander into the rest of the apartment.
It also has been a way to unplug from a source of stress. We all know that it is distinctly not conducive to good sleep to doomscroll Twitter before bed. Politics and COVID are inescapable on social media, and both are not only inherently stressful, they're sources of endless arguments, outrage, scolding, shaming, uninformed opinions, and on and on. It's nice to take a break from that.
I'm far from ready to withdraw altogether from social media, the way some of my friends have. (A social media detox or social media fast, as it's sometimes called.) I've occasionally considered unplugging permanently from Facebook because their ad models are scary and because Zuckerberg is an incorrigible weasel. But as I say, I still get a lot from my social interactions.
If the experiment goes well, I might at least expand my lights-out policy for social media. I suspect that the more I do it, the easier it will be to use social media in a healthier way.