Greetings!

For this blog post, I will be responding to the following prompt:

“How do you strike a balance between screen time for academic purposes and personal well-being? Are there any strategies or boundaries you’ve established to ensure a healthy relationship with technology?”

I found this question particularly interesting, as I used to really struggle to balance screen time between productive purposes and other personal uses, and it began to form a very unhealthy relationship with technology – particularly with my cell phone and social media.

Whether it be through silly iPhone games, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc., I found that I was constantly getting off task from the more productive things that I needed to be doing as a result of the distractions found on my phone. As a result, I was really struggling to manage my time.

I would constantly remind myself:

“What am I doing?”

“I need to get this done.”

And eventually, I realized that social media was beginning to be more of a hinderance than anything, so to re-establish a balance between productivity and self-indulgence during my screen time, I began to deactivate many of my social media accounts in early 2023. The only one I have left now is Instagram, which I seldomly use.

My baby-boomer Dad hates that I am not on Facebook, which kind of cracks me up. Personally, I have not thought about it since I deleted it. I have definitely felt like this change has increased my productivity, and having trimmed down my social media accounts quite a bit, I find that social media has become more enjoyable in itself. It has become easier to moderate. I no longer go from Instagram to Facebook to Snapchat and then back to Facebook and then realize that I should instead be panicked about upcoming deadlines. I get my stuff done in a timely manner, and still find time to use technology in a more leisurely, less addictive manner.

This is what has worked for me, and I used to be under the impression that giving up, or reducing social media usage is something that would be incredibly difficult in this day and age. In my experience, I have found social media to be very easy to ease up on, and I have found this experience to be rewarding. I still am able to keep in touch with all of my friends, and do not feel the “FOMO” that they associate with being off of social media. That is not to say that this is what everybody would find healthy, however in my case it was a great solution to managing my time more wisely.

If you are reading this, I am curious:

Have you ever deleted a social media account, or even thought about it? What was your motive, and if so, did you return to the platform eventually?

Thanks for reading!