10 actionable lessons from the documentary “Like”

Are we addicted to social media?

I recently watched “Like”, a documentary that explores the impact of social media on our lives. The goal of the documentary is to highlight that social media is a tool to connect, share and care but is it what’s really happening?

The following are the 10 actions we can all take to use social media platforms as a place to connect rather than letting it take over our lives -

1. Establish clear boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds. Spend time making real connections with people you love and care about.
2. It’s difficult to monitor how much time we and our children are spending on Social media platforms, therefore, set up hours during the day when you completely disconnect from social media to think, play, read and pursue a hobby.
3. Make a house rule to keep all devices out of your bedrooms and Disconnect all devices an hour before bedtime.
4. Do not check your social media first thing in the morning when you wake up.
5. Detox — delete all social media apps for a week per month.
6. Set up your phone to switch to grayscale mode to reduce screen time.
7. Make all your family mealtimes device free.
8. Know the stats, there are 2 billion people on social media and on average each one checks their feed 150 times a day. Limit checking your social media per day.
9. Get focused — Turn off all in-app notifications. It’s a distraction and it takes about 24 mins to get back your focus for every 6 mins of checking social media.
10. Prune- Over the years we download a lot of apps and add a lot of people of social media. Every year make a New Year’s resolution to edit your apps and contacts on social media.

Technology is here to stay and help us become more productive but are we running the technology or is the technology running us?

Do you have other ideas on how we can reduce the impact of social media on our lives? Please share!