After a decade plus of social media we're starting to realise its effects on our overall mental health AND doing something about it. This is good.
this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
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Technology
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I've been so much more chill since Musk bought Twitter and I jumped ship to Mastodon. Granted, I've also taken steps over the past couple of years to be more mindful and try to be in control of negative thoughts, but I feel like not using Twitter anymore has turn-charged my route to mental well-being.
So, er, thanks Elon, I guess?
Removing reddit was better for my mental health, and luckily Lemmy hasn't turned toxic yet.
I agree, and Ive also realized there's just less content in Lemmy. Can't really scroll for hours when you hit the bottom after 20 mins.
Lmao
When I was in college I did a similar thing using a Chrome add on that removed my Facebook news feed during finals week. At some point since I left college though, either Facebook changed their algorithm or enough friends dropped the platform that I basically just don't use it anymore. There's people I'd like to interact with still on there, but I just stopped seeing their stuff.
When I scroll Facebook I get like one post from someone I know for every 10 sponsored/suggested posts from random shit I don't care about.
This is why I left 5 years ago. I never actually got to see my friends posts, so what was the point? I could manually pull up everyone’s page, but that wasn’t the point. I was wasting so much time just trying to see if I missed anything that I gave up, quit the platform and honestly didn’t feel like I missed anything.
I've added those suggested posts to my uBlock filter.
Now every time I open Facebook, it starts to flip out by loading stuff and immediately blocking it until I encounter a post from my friends.
Really shows you how little is actually posted.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When she really needs to focus on her work, Susie Alegre uses an app on her phone that blocks her access to social media sites for however long she requires.
Ms Alegre, a human rights lawyer and author based in London, says shutting off in this way enables her to better concentrate, because it stops her from getting distracted.
Ms Alegre adds that she uses the Freedom app, as opposed to simply turning off her handset, "when I need to be contactable on the phone, but I really don't want to be distracted".
"Ironically, my book is precisely about the challenge of focus in the digital age, and the way tech is designed to engage with our minds and interfere with our thought process," she says.
She believes that in order to protect people's work-life balance, workplaces should establish guidelines around expected response times to messages or emails.
If you don't want to rely on apps to boost your focus, Mark Channon, a productivity and mindset coach, advises making small changes in your daily routine to begin with.
The original article contains 951 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I looked into using freedom.to recently, because I am terrible for being easily distracted by the allure of websites (He said, posting on Lemmy while at work - stupid ADHD...), but I just can't justify how much they're charging.
£3 a month isn't much, but it's on top of other subscriptions I already have to creators whose work I enjoy, and streaming services my family use. And ultimately it's £3 a month to not be able to access stuff, which doesn't sit right with me. And yeah, I could pay once and have it forever, but that's £85. That's a lot of money to spend to try and have the same relationship with technology as 'normal' people.
I do use Cold Turkey sometimes, which has a free tier and is great, but that doesn't extend to my phone/iPad.