How to Keep Social Media from Eating Your Life

Let me be the first to say it: This is kind of a horse-has-left-the-barn post for me. My day looks like I ran smack into the opening credits for The Matrix. That’s in part because what social media sites do is incredibly powerful: They unite communities across great gaps of space.

For those of you who still have a life to save from the ever-present pings of social media, I’ve got five quick tips for keeping the information onslaught at bay.

Here’s why doing so is important: Your time and presence are valuable to the folks at Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, Instagram, Goodreads, and all of the rest. They need that time and they think they need it more than *you* need it. That’s why they’re set up to email you about every change and update. They’re lonely. They need you. Please write.

Truth is, they’re not lonely. They just wouldn’t exist without you. (Well, Twitter might devolve to a bunch of Oscar Wilde* bots sending messages back and forth.)

But guess what? They’re all programs, designed to do one thing beyond all others: Whenever you get out, they try to pull you back in.

So here are a few ways to keep them from eating your life (some of which you may already be familiar with, but they’re worth revisiting)–allowing you to enjoy social media sites when you’re ready, but don’t feel the need to come running every time they call.

1. Digests. Digests are your BFF. Every chance you get, whether it’s on a message board for a favorite interest or group, or a book site, go into your profile and find where they’ve stuck the “send me updates every:” followed by radio buttons with increments like “five minutes,” “daily,” and “weekly.” (this is usually in “notifications” or “emails”.) Checking a desired time frame will keep messages from coming to your inbox every time your nephew updates his status; instead, you’ll get a collected, shortened version, in one handy packet.
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2. Never.  Along with the daily and weekly updates, there’s another choice for how often you are notified about new things: never. You can elect to only see updates for certain sites when you choose to visit them. This is totally freeing, though you may miss out on some news because of the next thing.
3. Filters. Facebook infamously filters what you see when you’re on the site, based on some mystery algorithm that brings you cat photos while hiding birth announcements and posts about your best friend who moved away coming back for a visit. But you, too, can play the filter game on most social media sites–you can select to always see items from “family” or “inner circle” members that you designate.

4. Social Fixer, HootSuite, etc. Tools like Social Fixer and HootSuite allow you even greater control over what you see. You can plug in a number of filters on Social Fixer (donations welcome); you can manage multiple social media accounts on HootSuite (for a fee). It feels funny that we’re using overlays to control rampant problems in information flow on sites that are supposedly all about us… but that’s for another post.

    

5. A babysitter for your eyeballs. Can’t keep yourself from checking twitfaceboogle while you’re supposed to be writing that article on Social Media management? (ahem.) Or your next book? (COUGH.) Check out Anti-Social 1.0. Once you’ve downloaded it, put in a list of sites, set a timer, push start, and whammo, those sites aren’t available for the length of time you set. Don’t think you need this? Give it a try and see how many times in an hour you actually try to “just check what’s going on.” Better, realize the power of taking back control over when you do check. I’m going to go set mine for an hour right now.

*no relation