This article explains changes I made to how I use social media and my smart phone since deleting my accounts. Hopefully you find these tips useful too.

1. Social media on-the-go is a no 🔗

Today’s world is full of content. Videos, friend requests, likes, comments, memes, notifications. We are always connected and online. An endless amount of media, pop culture, and content is at our fingertips. Sometimes this is helpful and convenient, like a quick message to a friend.

But a constant connection can be a drug too. When a convenient escape from a moment always exists in your pocket, this encourages a default reaction of opening the phone and scrolling through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, or anything that offers a momentary distraction or something “more interesting” than whatever we are currently doing. Ultimately, we turn to social media on our smartphones for a short blast of dopamine.

Remove the “convenience” factor 🔗

I took two steps to break this habit. First, acknowledge there are negative effects to social media usage. I also had to acknowledge that self-discipline and self-moderation is hard. I knew the negative effects of social media usage, but despite knowing this, it was still hard to avoid. So, the second step is to make the self-discipline easier: drop the apps from your phone.

When I deleted Facebook and eventually Instagram apps from my phone, they were no longer convenient. To check either one, I had to use a mobile web app or a computer. The mobile web apps were tedious and slow, and a computer was not always accessible. When the “convenience” factor was gone, it became easier to disconnect from the online world because it simply wasn’t there.

Anything that required me to use social media could wait until it was convenient – usually when I am sitting down at a computer.

Soup is on, phone is off 🔗

I also took steps to increase my awareness of my usage. If having a dinner with friends or colleagues, I turned my phone off before entering the restaurant or meeting the group. My phone is off at the moments I turn to it at the dinner table. Powering it back on is inconvenient. Whatever distraction I was looking for would have to wait five minutes for the phone to boot.

“Right, it’s off for a reason,” I would think as I slipped the phone back into my pocket.

2. Data-driven observations: Scientific method for phones 🔗

After deleting my social media accounts, I wanted to understand: how often do I use my phone? What applications steal most of my attention? How much is too much? I decided to take a scientific approach and run an experiment.

I took a quantitative approach. I measured my usage by application to understand how much time I spent on different apps. I discovered QualityTime, an application that met my requirements. QualityTime measures your total daily screen usage, how much time you use on all applications, and how many times you unlock your phone screen in a day. [Note: Since this article was written, both iOS and Android introduced phone usage metrics. No app is required for this anymore, but QualityTime still offers some useful features.]

After installing QualityTime, I used the default quota of two and a half hours a day as the suggested maximum daily use. I was surprised I came close to or past 2.5 hours every day. Now, I see what applications take most of my time. Then, I make adjustments based on the feedback I see. I started to think things like…

Is this application worth the two hours a day? What am I getting out of this?

I need to cut back here, over four hours is way too much.

Now, I had data to inform my lifestyle changes or alert me when I need to make changes. When I saw my daily usage by the numbers, I better understood my own habits. It increased my awareness into how I use my phone and manage my digital life.

And often, awareness is the best foundation for making incremental changes to our life and how we manage our time.

3. What you see is what you find 🔗

What and who do you allow in your social media life? Your “feed”, for any application or app, is powerful. Your feed is a daily dose of perspective and thoughts delivered directly to your phone. What you see in social media is what you will find reflected back in the world around you.

In my case, I still use Twitter as my primary social media presence. Since deleting my Facebook and Instagram, I also become more aware of my Twitter timeline. I never followed many people by some standards – 200 people or so. First, I realized I missed content from half of those people because of how Twitter tailors what I see. Second, I become more aware of the actual content from the people I followed.

Change configuration settings of your mood 🔗

Since the November 2016 elections, social media is a “black box”. You will find many different things. You find empowering optimism, cynical pessimism, and some things between the two. As I found out, content on my timeline has a tangible, noticeable effect on my daily perspective. If someone I follow launches a cynical Twitter thread about a current event, that cynicism translates into my own view.

We cannot pretend that what we read on the screen has no effect on our real lives.

Less is more 🔗

So, I became a “jerk”. I reduced who I followed on Twitter to about 50 people. Then I sought out people from various aspects of my life—technology, spirituality, friends and family—that have a positive impact to my daily outlook. I put a filter on what I filter in my feed: I looked for inspirational wisdom, people who would motivate me to enlightened action. I turned away from anger, angst, hate, and cynicism.

However, there is a balance between naïvety and cynicism. We can choose optimism without being naïve. Additionally, we can choose skepticism without being cynical. The point is not to drown out reality or hide away in a bubble. We must be realistic about what is happening in the world and stay hopeful. To stay motivated. To not wake up, read through your feed, and curl back depressed into bed.

My best advice is be conscious of what you filter in your social media feed. Your feed is close and personal. It is powerful. And what you see digitally is often what you find reflected back at you in non-digital life.

Considering Facebook deletion? 🔗

Considering to cut the plug? Check out this excellent article from Recode about how to responsibly cut down on Facebook. Even if full deletion is not what you are after, it suggests helpful tips on spending less time there.

Good luck! 🔗

These lessons are fundamental to me and changed how I manage my digital life. Beyond the digital world, I notice the beginnings of change. I am more present in the things I do and spend my time with. Now, when I go out with friends and family, I appreciate the time spent with them without a hole burning in my pocket.

I hope these lessons are also helpful to you too. Additionally, if you have any other tips or comments for others, please drop a comment below!

Featured image arranged by Justin Wheeler.

friends by Ilaria. Bernareggi, thumbs up by mikicon, Facebook by Saloni Sinha, and more by Ilaria Bernareggi from the Noun Project.

Open source becomes more common every year, where it appears at government municipalities to universities. More companies turn to open source software too. However, some companies try to take it a step further, and instead of only using the software, they also support projects financially or with developers. Facebook’s open source program encourages others in Facebook to release their code as open source. They also work and engage with the community to support the projects too.

Christine Abernathy, a Facebook developer advocate and member of the open source team, visited the Rochester Institute of Technology on November 15, 2017. She gave the November edition of the FOSS Talks speaker series. Her talk explained how Facebook approaches open source and why it’s an important part of the work they do.

Facebook and open source 🔗

Abernathy explained that open source plays a fundamental role in Facebook’s mission to create community and bring the world closer together. The ideological match was a motivational reason for Facebook’s participation in open source.

Additionally, Facebook has unique problems and challenges to solve for their infrastructure and development. Open source provides a platform to share those challenges and help others avoid similar mistakes.

Open source also provided a way to accelerate innovation and create better software. It helped engineering teams produce better software and work more transparently. Today, Facebook’s 443 projects on GitHub have 122,000 forks, 292,000 commits, and 732,000 followers.

Lessons learned 🔗

Abernathy emphasized that Facebook has learned many lessons from the open source community and hopes to learn many more. She identified the three most important lessons that Facebook took from open source:

1. Share what’s useful
2. Highlight your heroes
3. Fix common pain points

Christine Abernathy visited RIT as part of the FOSS Talks speaker series. Every month, a guest speaker from the open source world shares wisdom, insight, and advice about the open source world with students interested in free and open source software. The FOSS @ MAGIC community is thankful to have Abernathy attend as a speaker!