Part of living on the modern internet is realizing that a social network just isn’t useful or fun anymore. The thing that you used to get from social media—friends, jokes, or information—have disappeared, generally replaced by some combination of rage, churn, and monetization schemes.
Even knowing this, though, it can be hard to give up the habit of visiting Facebook, X, Instagram (or whatever network you still use) that’s been part of your life for years or even decades. Part of this is just human nature—we’re creatures of habit. Another part of this is that most social networks employ teams of brilliant psychologists and designers who work hard to make quitting as hard as possible.
The good news? You can fight back, turning the tricks these companies use against you to your advantage. A new year is about to begin—resolve to stop spending time on a website that you hate. Here’s a few ways you can do that.
Make the social network annoying to use
The companies that build social networks work hard to reduce friction—those moments of annoyance that might cause you to do something else. If a page takes a while to load, for example, you might decide to do something else instead.
Knowing about friction can help you train yourself to visit particular social networks less often: you just need to add some friction. If you tend to reflexively open a social network on your phone, for example, you could remove the icon for the social network from your phone’s home screen, meaning you’ll have to scroll through your list of apps in order to launch it. Or, to make things more annoying, you could uninstall the app entirely.
Even after uninstalling the application you might find yourself still opening the social network in your browser. The good news is that most social networks are horrific in a mobile browser, in no small part because of the constant pop-ups and reminders to install the app. Think of these pop-ups as a reminder that you could be doing something—anything—else with your time.
The situation is a little different on your computer, where social networks generally live in your browser. I recommend logging out of the networks on your computer—that way you’ll need to actually retype your login info in order for the site to take up more of your time. This works even better if you enable two-factor authentication, which will make logging back in just a little more irritating.
You get the idea. Just do whatever you can to make opening the social network you’re trying to quit a little bit harder to open. This gives you a chance to realize what you’re doing and stop.
Block the app entirely
Is none of this working? There’s software you can use to block any website or app from opening. There are a number of applications built for this. Freedom is a cross platform solution, meaning it works on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS devices. Cold Turkey works well on Windows; Session is very good on Apple devices.
All of these applications will stop particular apps or websites from loading. None of them can completely solve the problem for you, mostly because there’s nothing stopping you from turning them off. All of them can help you create more friction, though, which as we’ve talked about can go a long way toward helping you check a social network less often.
Replace your habit with another one
The thing with social networks is that they eat up a lot of your time. The fun part about quitting them is you suddenly find yourself with more time. You could use that time productively, sure, but that’s boring (and, arguably more importantly, might lead to a relapse). This is why I recommend choosing something fun to do in the moments when you reflexively find yourself wanting to log into the social network you’re trying to quit.You could, in theory, replace the bad social network with one that’s better. I prefer to replace the time with something else entirely. My editor Annie told me she’s been using the NYTimes Games app for this. I, personally, have been using a combination of advice columns and music reviews instead. You could also use something like Duolingo, a language learning app that employs a lot of the same tricks that social networks do in order to get you hooked on learning. Or you could just play a game for a few minutes. The point is to find something to open in the moments when you’d otherwise be opening the social network you’re trying to quit.
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