By Aditya Shukla, Psychologist, founder of Cognition Today
Escapism, doomscrolling, echochambers, bullying, obsessive googling, picking fights
Connecting, diverse interactions, limited time, constructive posts, helping, entertainment
The more negative news you consume, the more it sits in your head, influencing other negative thoughts.
Algorithms push your interests. But this is a sure-shot way to create echo chambers where you only validate your biases and unhealthy beliefs. Increase diversity in your likes, posts, follows, and comments so you widen your feed and perspective.
A continuous feed of exciting content is so engaging that you can easily lose hours of scrolling. Put an alarm or a reminder to stop within 15 minutes.
Stop liking posts where you compare yourself to others. Others often portray themselves positively. Then you feel bad comparing yourself to an unrealistic illusion on the internet. Don't take what you see personally.
Notifications reminding of your new uploads is an instant trigger to get distracted. Build the habit of going on someone's channel and then explore instead of having 100 daily notifications.
The average person has 200 + apps. Cut them down as much as possible so you don't develop mindless routines to use social apps for the sake of using them.
Ensure you do at least 1 meaningful activity on social media if you start missing it. Network, announce something, leave a good comment, help someone, save quality content, etc. Being active creates satisfaction without feeling you've wasted time.