Goal 1: Quit Facebook.
I quit Facebook completely in April 2012 and have never gone back. I permanently deleted my account. I didn’t just deactivate it, which in my opinion is a total cop out.
If you’re serious about quitting Facebook, the first thing to do is get all of the Facebook related apps off your phone. I don’t care what people say, when it’s on your phone, it basically on your person 24/7 and it’s so much harder for your addicted brain (more dopamine anyone?) to battle with the ever-present temptation of checking your feed or your likes etc. If it’s on your phone, you WILL relapse sooner or later.
The same thinking applies to iPads and Android tablets. They are no different from phones. In my experience, although people don’t carry tablets with them everywhere they go (that’s what phones are for) many people keep a tablet next to their bed or the couch. Instead of sleeping or watching a film on television with 100% of their attention, they end up playing games or mindlessly browsing the internet with the film on the television serving as little more than background noise and further distraction. This kind of fragmented attention multi-taking is what rapidly turns you into a zombie/vegetable/addict.
I believe that anything beneficial and meaningful about Facebook (and the internet in general) can be done on a desktop PC in your home (or a laptop functioning a desktop PC) in no more than 30 minutes a week.
Restrict yourself to 30 minutes Facebook use per week for two weeks. If you’re successful in doing this, reduce the time to 20 minutes per week for the following two weeks.
You can split the time however you like across the days of the week, just make sure you don’t exceed the maximum weekly browsing time. Ever. Set a timer/alarm to go off (make it loud and annoying) at the end of this allotted browsing time to jolt you out of your potentially mind numbing stupor. Keep a pen and pad next to your desktop PC, and before you even power it up to go on Facebook, write down on the pad, in as much detail as you can, exactly what it is you intend to do in your 5 or 10 minute mini session and allocate amounts of time to each separate activity. Be as detailed and specific as you can. Why?
This is often enough to put the brakes on and make you realise the futility the random, undefined browsing you were about to engage in. You read it back to yourself and realise that you weren’t going to do anything important and that you were merely scratching a dopamine driven itch, because you’re an addict. If you can’t describe, in writing, anything meaningful that you’re going to do online, then you simply don’t browse. At all.
Keep reducing the Facebook time by 10 minutes per week every two weeks until you don’t use Facebook.
All of this is designed to make your Facebook access location dependent, on a single “access terminal” inside your home. If you’re not at home, then you can’t use it, and if you are, there are boundaries and barriers in place to reduce ease of access and slow down your thought process so you actually become MINDFUL about using it. It’s the polar opposite of how most people currently use Facebook on their phones and tablets.
Once you’ve successfully whittled it down over the weeks to the point where you’re using Facebook on your desktop PC for no more than 10 minutes a week for two weeks, you’re probably ready to try the next step - dropping to ZERO minutes a week for two weeks. Once you’ve successfully done that, you need to login to Facebook for one final time, delete your account and then logout. Provided you don’t login again within 14 days of deletion (that’s what it was when I did it in 2012) then your account is permanently deleted and your addiction is cured. Hopefully.
Two things.
Firstly, if you can’t bring yourself to remove all traces of Facebook from your phone and/or tablet, then don’t bother going any further because your inner addict is lying to you. Deleting it from your phone/tablet is a massive first step and it’s MASSIVE for a reason. It is probably 95% of the act of cutting the chord. If you can do this and NOT reinstall the apps, you’re probably going to be successful overall.
Secondly, don’t think you’ll successfully customize this method by reducing the desktop PC browsing time by 30 seconds per week every 4 weeks or some nonsense. That’s not going to cut it. Again, it’s simply your addicted brain bargaining with you. It’s like saying you promise to take crystal meth every other day instead of daily. It’s not going to be successful.
You can extrapolate this approach to any other social media platform or to internet in general.
Remember the first step in any of this is to remove social media from your phone.
Good luck.
