How to spend less– and more intentional– time on social media

I'd been spending very intentional time– and far less time– on social media in 2025 and 2026 than I have in years past. It was going great! Then, in March I got Covid again, and by May I had long Covid, and extreme chronic fatigue as the worst symptom, and suddenly I didn't have the energy to go anywhere but the couch. I backslid into a lot more time on social media and playing games on my phone again. And my mental health definitely took a hit. So here I am, again. Writing about this, again, and slowly clawing my way back into the world of the living, again. ;-) I share why I'm still on social media, why I'm determined to spend less time on social media, and ideas for spending more intentional time on social media and less time on social media and on your phone, in general. I end by offering a personal example of what spending less time on social media and our phones actually gets us and our world. And asking you to imagine...

Why am I on social media?

Why are you on social media? Here's why I'm still on social media:

• I pop into Facebook (FB) to talk to and support family and friends I love who live many miles or continents away, and to connect friends with each other or to resources, and to participate in our local Buy Nothing group, barter/swap/exchange groups, community announcements group, and ethical foraging/gardening groups. There are a lot of elders here. We need elders these days and we need to support elders too. This is one place to find elders and support them, although in person is exponentially better, when possible.
• I currently use Instagram (IG) to see what local small organizations and makers/creatives and activists and businesses are doing/wondering/needing/offering, to follow and support fellow creatives/artists/writers/activists/comedians/herbalists around the world, to follow independent researchers and journalists and historians who I trust (I get some of my news here), and to share about my writing. I don't share much of my own work directly on social media anymore: it's too creepy and dangerous in a police state. But I share occasional pointers to it. I also seek to get people to sign up for my newsletter, because I believe authoritarian governments could take social media from us whenever they want to, without warning. There are a lot of hard working, hilarious, and openly struggling adults on IG: mostly millennials and Gen Xers plus some younger and a few older makers, creators, artists, activists, reporters, gardeners, small business owners, therapists, doctors, etc. When I'm mindful of what I want, Instagram helps me see that I'm not alone in struggling right now and lets me lean on what therapy-and-healing-forward people younger than me do to rest and heal and blow off steam.
• I talk to strangers for the pure joy of it on Threads right now, and I support and commiserate with women and nonbinary folks, and I offer a listening ear, emotional support, and/or humor/joy/hope to oppressed, frightened, and harmed people present. At the moment there are so many real people on Threads that it's a good spot to feel less alone in the world. Although the baddies lurk in Threads now, too. AI accounts are especially creepy here– seeing how long they can keep you talking until you figure out they're AI. Bleh. To participate here regularly and be a good "Thriend" you must commit to block, hide from all, and/or report bad accounts regularly. Meta should do this work but they don't appear to. And, as on all Meta social media now, you must be aware that everything you say could be used against you by well-funded entities into extraction, exploitation, surveillance, automated marketing, and otherwise harming others.

I've tried to switch to other platforms: BlueSky, Mastadon, and UpScrolled, for example. But to make those switches I'd have to leave behind Meta, and I've yet to convince enough of my community to make that leap with me yet. Yet. That time is approaching. Social media will continue. Abuse-and-exploitation-centered organizations like X, Truth Social, and Meta won't once enough of us have had enough of those complicit with cruelty, authoritarianism, and fascism.

Why spend less time on social media?

Beyond the obvious one– more time for real life and the real world where joy and connection are far easier to access in the sky, the trees, the sunshine, the dogs, the faces, etc.– today, at least here in the U.S., "social media" means balancing what you really want to be doing online against all these tech-oligarchs-run-the-social-media-world realities:

• Creepy "we're always listening to you" ads and ads and more ads and creepy lurking, following you, accounts.
• Corporate surveillance, manipulation, and outright theft of ideas, art, photos, and writing on social media.
• AI slop and meme slop. If you're not careful, social media these days is a dumb-down machine that makes people think less, connect less, create less, fear more, hate more, and become less able to fight back against authoritarian organizations and governments. It's almost the exact opposite of what it was 20 years ago.
• Receiving horrible threats from bots for speaking your mind, in many places.
• Hostile government(s) and police-state surveillance.
• It's expected that 75% of accounts/posts/comments within social media will be from bot farms, fake accounts/manipulation accounts, or AI slop by the end of 2026. Why keep trying to find humanity in a place where true humanity is now in such a minority?
• Censorship and active harm. On Instagram, activists fighting for the land, the water, children, and against genocide are often shadow banned, censored, or their accounts are just deleted. When I show up just being myself in comments sections on mainstream news and politicians'/government accounts on Facebook, for example, I'm often attacked by a flood of clearly automated bot farm accounts happy to degrade, harm, spew rape and death threats, and overwhelm individuals. Nothing at all social about that. I once had to delete a comment I'd made that resonated with real people, because more than a thousand bot accounts flooded me with threats and I couldn't keep up with blocking them all. Meta could fix that. But they don't. In fact, Meta was caught hiring a neo-Nazi and an anti-vaxxer to put rage-bait content onto Facebook, in clear violation of their own policies. Facebook, Instagram, and Threads all feel like they've become a massive distraction, manipulation, and extraction machine now—serving some creepy faction of the uber wealthy—not actually serving human beings as social media anymore. And if you attempt to speak to them about it, or change it, you learn quickly that they do not care to hear from us, let alone what happens to us. In fact, active confusion and outright harming of regular people feels like it's their goal now.

Ideas for spending less time– and more quality time– on social media (and less time on your phone in general)

Here's how I've begun to spend less time, and better time, again, on social media. I wrote this for myself and my family. Use what works for you and ignore what doesn't work for you:

• Know why you're on social media. Literally write it down somewhere, like I just did above. And if you're on more than one platform, write down why you're on each one. If you know exactly why you're there, you're far more likely to notice when you're being manipulated into doing things you're not there to do by algorithms and bad actors there to manipulate/extract/harm. Pro tip: tell a close friend or family member why you're present– people who can notice and hold you to account if what you're doing online doesn't align with what you want to be doing.
• When you find yourself doing things on social media that aren't in alignment with what you came to do, log out, move, and go outside. I know we can do this because we've trained ourselves to do this same thing at the grocery store. The moment we start putting a bunch of things in the cart that aren't good for us and aren't on the list, we now leave or we end up with a cart full of chocolate bars and ice cream and a fridge and freezer full of regrets when we get home. ;-) Treat social media the same. Argued with a friend or stranger you didn't want to argue with? Been convinced you need something that you didn't think you needed yesterday? Clicked an ad you shouldn't have? Shared manipulative or untrue slop? Feel far worse about yourself or like there's nothing you can do? Find your emotions heightened or your feelings hurt again? That's on purpose. End up spending two or three hours online when you just popped on to see the daily specials at a local restaurant? You have been manipulated. You've been intentionally tricked and kept distracted from living the beautiful life you're here to live. Notice that. Think about that while you're outside. The outside part is important. Listen to the real world. Breathe in the real world. If you can't go outside, open a window or touch a plant or a dog or cat or family member and listen for a few minutes. Social media can be far more dangerous than the ice cream or chocolate aisles at the grocery store when you stop paying attention. Because every single thing that keeps you present and keeps you clicking and staying angry or staying longer is being recorded, tracked, and sold to the highest bidders: so they can keep you present and angry and distracted and clicking and/or buying even more in the future.
• While outside, thank everyone and everything you see that supports you. Being manipulated and staying online too long hurts you. Hurts your family too. Online, large organizations and now billionaire-backed governments are actively trying to make you feel unworthy, unloved, depressed or anxious, and like you don't belong: so that they can sell you fixes for that. Outside heals. Feeling gratitude for life and the living heals. For example, as an herbalist, I thank forests, fields, trees, and plants by name. As a gardener I thank soil, raised beds, the hose, birds, insects, etc. As a human, I thank the ground, the breeze, the sky. Thank the corner store. Thank my dog and cats and partner. Thank neighbors. Thank the used book store and the library. Thank those who make me laugh and those who think of me and include me. Thank smiling, and honest with me, faces.
• Go out into your local community and find a beautiful covered container for your phone. I'm looking for one this week. By covered I mean not an open-top basket or bowl where you can see the phone. Something that encloses the phone so you can't see it. Ideas for sourcing this container: visit your auntie or grandma's house and see if she has something lovely to share, or visit a local small business, a thrift store, a swap/exchange event, a community center share, a makers market or farmers market, or a friend's house– someone who has extra containers or who makes beautiful woven or wood or clay or metal (etc.) containers. Ask in your local Buy Nothing group. Or make something yourself or with your kids or friends. It's autumn here in the northern hemisphere: get out that modge podge, find some fallen leaves, and make a beautiful box! Ideally, the container should be considered beautiful and meaningful to you (whatever that means to you). For me that means it should not be mass produced, plastic, or purchased from an authoritarian-government-supporting corporation such as Amazon, Target, Walmart, or Home Depot. But you do you. The container should honor your intent to use the tool that is your cell phone only for good and only when you choose to, not like an addict who desperately needs it to function. Pro tip: If your family/household is close or interested in getting closer, consider getting one container to hold all your phones. In some cultures, the whole family or community shares just one cell phone. That's advanced human-ing. I'm not sure most of us in the U.S. are ready for that level of family or community closeness. May we get there soon.
• Put your phone(s) into a beautiful container when not in use and put the beautiful container in a different room, on a high shelf, or in a different building than you relax, rest, play, or work in. Out of sight, out of mind. Some people use apps to limit their time on their phones. Those don't work for me, I just shut them off and keep reading, writing, or watching. I have to put the phone in another room, and I'm thinking I might even start storing it out in my partner's studio so I have to leave the house and my home office to get it. Now that big tech is so willing to manipulate us, listen to us, track us, and sell and share our data without our consent, this has the added benefit of messing with their ability to do all that. And at the very least, it lessens the feeling like you're being listened to 24 x 7 by devices.
• People first: ask people questions IRL. People and faces first, books/music/art next, laptop third, phone last. If you can work from anywhere, when possible, choose people-gathering places such as libraries, community centers, coffee shops, coworking spaces, church basements, invite people over, etc. At least a few days/week. And no matter where you work, practice asking other human beings questions first, instead of defaulting to the internet first. Lonely? Feel like you don't belong? That's because people need people, not screens and definitely not AI, to fully live and to thrive.
• When you can work outside, work outside. Practice asking your home planet questions instead of defaulting to humanity first or only. If you can't work outside, take breaks outside to ask questions. Land first, sky next, then local waterways or trees and plants next, and then wildlife. Listen. You're utterly surrounded by life on earth: by different perspectives and ways of being and beings far older and wiser or less fearful or more in sync with others or more resilient or more restful than human beings are. Take a deep breath, ask your question, shut your eyes for a moment, and listen. I like to take notes on paper. Or, better yet, ask "What question should I be asking now?" or "What do you have to share with me now?" and just listen. Part of humanity's magic is that we're deeply connected to this place. Some people can hear tree songs and jokes, feel the moment seasons begin and end, feel weather coming, notice what plants are offering and when plants show up to help, feel shifts and changes in local waterways, help and be helped by birds, insects, reptiles, and animals. Some people fluidly center wonder and gratitude, move with magic, delight in finding birds or God or mermaids or fairies. Experience us all as one. Every moment on a device is a decision to let go of our innate ways of being connected to where we are and our body-deep intuition about our home world. Anxious? Depressed? Exhausted? Too much time listening to humanity and being manipulated via screens. Yes, and. Could part of that be because we've been deceived into limiting our own connections with the earth? Give nature at least as much time as screens. Ideally, more. We protect who and what we know and love.
• Work with your family and friends to limit phone time and social media time together. I read recently that the CEOs of big tech companies limit social media time for their kids to no more than 1.5 hours per week. They know how bad overuse of it is for us, and they push it down our throats– they push addiction– anyway. Some more ways to limit time...
  • Host and attend gatherings where cell phones aren't welcome or are gathered at the door and returned to people when they leave.
  • Play with getting around your city without using online maps. It's good for your brain, creativity, and intuition. When you must use online maps, use Here We Go or MapQuest. Avoid using Google Maps and Apple Maps now. These massive corporations have demonstrated shocking cowardice (Hello, Lake Ontario) and are complicit with and supporting those who believe authoritarianism, fascism, slavery, and genocide are all good ideas.
  • Create set phone and/or social media hours with your friends and family: outside of those hours, don't use apps on your phone or visit social media sites. My work life and life as a care partner for my elder father who lives 50 minutes away is a little too unpredictable and sporadic for that level of strict time-specific discipline, so I'm starting to do this instead...
  • If you have the privilege and ability to leave your phone at home sometimes when you go out, do that. We've started doing this. We take a notebook or sketchbook or book or game and/or cameras (my sweetie is a photographer) instead. Write and draw or read or play IRL with others instead some days. See how that makes you feel. Remember everything that you yourself can do, and love to do, that you've allowed social media and the phone to quietly take away from you. In my case, I used to use all my little scraps of free time to write poetry– an I-love-life-and-the-world creation and connection activity– until the phone slowly replaced that with playing games and scrolling social media– addictive and often isolating activities. When I'm going to work in a nearby library or coffee shop, I sometimes leave the phone at home or leave it in the glove box in the car (just in case ICE shows up and I want the recording functionality). If I'm expecting a text or call, I leave it zipped into a pocket of my purse. I try not to leave it out where I can see it anymore. As a writer, I'm alone working in libraries and coffee shops a lot. I don't need the temptation.
• Scrub your social media feeds somewhat regularly and use it to learn about yourself. I do a scrub twice a year now. Algorithms send us more and more of the same. But we humans evolve, change, unlearn, grow, and learn. Often. The constant push of sameness can be dull as shit. Ideas:
  • Take the time to explore outside of what's being spoon fed to you in your feed. Like and comment on wildly different things--new music, different authors and artists, silly farmers, serious children, people breaking out of the box or the mold for where they live, etc. Follow people and organizations in a variety of places, countries, fields, hobbies, etc. Follow your favorite authors, organizations, makers, historians, artists, comedians, activists, lovers of life, etc.
  • When you notice that everybody seems to be feeling and saying the same things, it's definitely time to go see who the algorithms have hidden from you and/or commit to doing more in real life (IRL) activities and making more IRL friends.
  • Join interest and hobby groups on FB that have good Admins and leave groups that don't. Join a new group or two IRL if all your groups are online.
  • Let go of/hide/unfollow/block/report and/or hide-from-all ("hide from all" is a Threads thing you can do to comments on your own feed) accounts and people that act bot-like: that is, accounts that share unhelpful nonsense and AI slop or name-call, bully, manipulate, threaten, overwhelm, and those that seek to suck all joy and belonging out of people within community or turn people on their fellow human beings. Some of these are real people and groups, yes. And. Most are paid bad actors, bot farms, and AI these days.
  • Ask people in real life who they follow and why.
  • Make sure to follow and share the creations of real people and real groups and real creators. Avoid AI like the plague it is and unfollow accounts that share it, use it, or are it. Warn friends, family, and organizations that you'll stop following them online if they use AI intentionally.
  • Share your favorites, especially obscure favorites, with friends.
  • Once a year, think about who/what you and those you love need more of in your lives. Review who you're following and let go of everything not currently serving who you are now and those you love.
  • Use social media to learn about yourself and to change yourself. For example: I have friends in and near Gaza and the West Bank, so I don't ever fully look away from the ongoing genocide there. Three years ago, the Instagram algorithm decided that I needed to see non-stop wounded, bleeding, tortured, screaming, exploding, starving, hunted, burning, and dying children and elders. Because I love my friends, I didn't want to look away. Within 5 months across the winter of 2023/spring of 2024, I fell into a deep depression. I felt entirely alone and angry at the world letting this happen and looking away. I fell so low that I couldn't get off the couch, let alone DO anything to help my friends in the real world. Luckily, rage and love of life came to my rescue. I had to let go of social media for weeks at a time to heal, and I had to start writing again (my deep joy), and then actively work to bring balance to my real life and then, to my social media feeds again. When I'm on social media now, I'm aware that I am there to connect to the world I love, and so that I have the will to live and the energy to keep loving and helping my friends in all corners of the world–and to help others do the same. If you're going to try to hold the worst of humanity online, you also have to hold equal parts of the best we can be, imagine, dream, and do together. Meta algorithms absolutely won't help you do that. They'll sink you if you care about humanity as a whole. And those running Meta appear to be happy to distract, manipulate, and cause harm to humanity as a whole as long as they're making money.
• Don't Admin Facebook groups when you don't have the time to serve in the position (skip this bullet if you don't Admin or aspire to Admin a Facebook group). Admin as small groups, not as individuals. Good, loving, present Admins who work together and demonstrate community care are a remarkable gift. Bad Admins harm community both online and offline by doing things such as ignoring fake accounts and bots, ignoring bullies, and ignoring intentional abuse and breaking of group rules (either intentionally or because the Admins don't have time for it)—which means the online group gets more and more cruel and unreal, and then vacant, even dangerous, over time as tender-hearted good people drift away and scammers show up. A lot of people in Facebook groups believe their real communities or region or world are more full of cruel people than ever before, because their group Admins aren't weeding out fake accounts, bots, AI nonsense, and the handful of real bullies who nobody listens to in person so they hang out in poorly Admin'd online groups where they feel heard and are rarely challenged or held to account for spreading pain and fear in the community.
• Become unreachable now and then. Our always on, always reachable, and always expecting an immediate response culture is nonsensical, cruel, and damaging humans, especially children, as a whole. Tell your loved ones where you'll be and just disappear for a while.
• Go farther than we have! Here are more ways to take your life back from social media and cell phones. We've talked about these. Haven't done them yet. It's so telling that the off-the-charts wealthy men running giant tech companies either actively ban their children from using social media at all or they limit them to no more than 1.5 hours per week. The men building this giant surveillance/extraction/selling/manipulation machine know how damaging it is. They know its a trap for regular people and kids and elders—a non-stop-sales trap, self-esteem-harming trap, a surveillance trap, and a manipulation trap. Our family is talking about taking things even further. Things we may do but haven't done yet:
  • Establish several "no cell phone" days together. Using the phone only for texting and calls and only on certain days.
  • Remove all social media apps from our phones and use social media only on our laptops, where the clunkiness of the websites more naturally help us limit our time on social media even further. And where apps don't record and track every click, trigger, emotion, and move we make to the same extent, though some still happens there too.
  • Leave social media. D has pretty much done this. He was never a fan. I have friends around the globe who I trust and who I only connect with via social media, so I'm not there yet. The corporations running social media platforms may not be trustworthy but the real people I know who are using the platforms definitely are. I love receiving their perspectives, news, and beautiful creations. And in the case of Facebook, I love participating in local groups such as Buy Nothing groups. Anti-Capitalist Me is a huge fan of all the generous sharing via groups and conversations that happen on all the platforms.
  • Remove games from our phones. Authoritarians and fascists have taken over our government. We need to rest and relax and play now and then, yes. But we don't need to be distracted, hiding, and playing games alone when our neighbors are being targeted, attacked, tortured, raped, disappeared, and/or killed and our rights are being stripped away. We need to connect with each other in person far more, and we need our friends and kids and loved ones to see us actively pushing back, in person, not just online.
  • Get "plain" phones. Apparently there are cell phones that have only the very basics on them. D's researching them. I'd like to return to the days when I didn't accidentally spend too many hours on my smartphone, again and again.
  • Stop supporting companies that actively harm others. We've boycotted dozens of corporations at this point. And I also have a policy to never spend money with large companies that advertise within Meta's social media platforms (only small and local for us, when possible). And I am holding in my hands the last iPhone I will ever buy. Shame on the corporate giants for choosing to be complicit with fascism, authoritarianism, surveillance, child slavery, rape, and genocide– with deep pockets and making obscene amounts of money in a world where children are now intentionally starved, raped, and murdered– instead of standing with regular good people everywhere. Regular good people: you know, the people who buy their products. We're done spending money with corporations that choose greed above loving the land and humanity as a whole. They think we can't live without them. They're wrong. We can't live without each other, and they're getting in the way of trust and true connection now: on purpose.
  • Return to a landline phone. Humans can survive and thrive without cell phones and the non-stop surveillance and tracking that comes with them today. Really really. In fact, we read a lot more books, created a lot more, and we relaxed more fully back before smartphones showed up in our lives.

Imagine

If you didn't have social media, or a smart phone at all, what would you do– or return to doing– to relax and reconnect with your home world?

If you're old enough to remember the pre-smartphone world, what gifts did you once offer the world that you're not offering anymore because you're spending more time distracted by or addicted to using social media or your smartphone?

Here's what I want to return to: writing poetry for the pure fun of it. This is what I used to do whenever I had 10-20 minutes of free time instead of playing games on my phone, which is what I often do now. I wrote this poem in a hardware store parking lot while my partner was inside looking for something, back in 2014 before I had many games on my phone. Back then, games mostly lived on an old iPad I used only during quiet evenings or after everyone else was in bed...

What Does a Poet Do?

for Alice Walker

Do you know that poets
in our hardest moments
in quiet attic battlefields
sit with you
to weep with joy?

Do you know that humans
at our most afraid
carrying hearts so tender
act
because your actions
give us faith in ourselves?

Do you know
as yet another person
loses sight of humanity
taking precious life
precious limbs
taking almost everything that matters
pointlessly
again and again and, fuck, not again,
until I want to rip the American 
and, this month, the Earthling badge
off my burning human uniform
hurl them into dark forgiving space
submerge my inner being in deep quiet waters,
do you know I turn to you?

When I lose the will to continue

When I feel helpless and certain there is nothing I can do.

In that moment

this moment

Alice

I again find you.

Thank you for showing up every day

to answer your question

my question now, too.

What does a poet do?