How to Reduce Internet/Social Media Distraction (Part 2)

 

If you haven't read part 1, click this link to read it: How to Use Smartphones and Prevent Them From Using You (Part 1) You can read these two posts in absolutely any order of your choice, no compulsion.

To be honest, I didn't expect I would be writing a part 2 to that post. But here we are! In this post, I will go into detail about a specific distraction caused by phones: Internet and Social Media.

You are reading a book, and you come across a word which you don't know the meaning of. It is quite tedious to search through the dictionary, so you open your phone to Google the meaning. Oh, hey, your mom just texted you to ask how you were doing. You open her chat and reply saying that you're good. Then you just saw that there was a notification from Instagram. Your friend sent you a reel. You opened the reel. It was hilarious, something about a funny pet. You scroll lower and see that your friend also put something on her story. You check that out. Then you open Snapchat since your classmate posted an old photo from your school. Wow, so much nostalgia. Then you check if there are any other notifications. Oh god, there was a robbery in a bank! You check the news article about it. After that, all the messages have been responded to. You lock your phone and place it on the table beside you and glance at whatever you were doing before. What were you doing? Ah, yes. Reading a book. You just read the line over again and realized that you had actually opened the phone to check the meaning of a word.

 

Has this happened to you?

It hasn't happened much to me. And here I am to tell you how you can prevent it from happening to you too!

1. Keep Wi-Fi/Mobile Data off: Whenever you are planning to use your phone for something important which doesn't require Wi-Fi, turn the Internet off. Well, if whatever you're planning to do requires Wi-Fi, here are a few steps to prevent distraction in a few apps:

   YouTube: Click Download for whichever video you want to watch without distractions. You can turn off the Internet to watch the video from your YouTube downloads section.

   WhatsApp: Mute notifications of all groups and contacts except those close and important people (for example, your parents, your siblings if you have any, and if you are a married adult, your spouse). Or here is another alternative. Send this message to those close people who would not disturb you unnecessarily: I need to concentrate so I am turning off Wi-Fi. If you need to tell me something, send me an SMS.

   Google Chrome: If you want to read an article or a webpage without distractions, save it to read later.

2. Emails: The first time I created an email account was probably when I was ten or eleven. I created it for making my YouTube channel (oh yeah, here's the link to my YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/@kushala_tigerrr1811 Do check it out. But after you're done reading this post. Don't get distracted! 😁).

So, when I created it, there were those sections called Promotions, Social, Updates and stuff like that. I didn't know what they were at first, so I just let it be. But after a few days I realized that my inbox is getting filled with irrelevant emails. So, I removed those sections. I just clicked the kebab menu (three vertical dots) and clicked Hide. I still have them, because I can't get rid of them. But at least I don't have them crowding my screen. 

Some employees have a habit of checking emails every single time. Don't do that. Keep a time out of your schedule for checking emails. Try to segregate the emails that you got into the Eisenhower Matrix:

3. Social media has its share of negatives and positives, but the way people are using it nowadays shows more negative effects. They spend so much time scrolling through reels on Instagram, texting on dischord, etc. Really, social media is a trap when you don't use it wisely. I don't have social media, unless you count YouTube and Gmail in. And Blogger, of course. But I have read about the effects social media has on people. So, here are a few golden rules to using social media:

i] If you use social media to be social: STAY SIGNED OUT ON DEFAULT. ONLY SIGN IN WHEN NEEDED. 

ii] If you do social networking/content-creating: GOOD FOR YOU. BUT KEEP TIME OUT OF YOUR SCHEDULE TO POST CONTENT. 

ii] is what I do for YouTube and Blogger.

I hope this is helpful. Use social media, don't let it use you! 😊