You need to break these social media habits today

Breaking bad habits is super, crazy hard. Something seemingly-simple, like quitting nail-biting, can take months of back-and-forth, punishing yourself one minute, and bribing yourself the next. Don’t forget: When you were a toddler, it probably took multiple efforts to get you to stop eating Play-Doh. And that’s OK!

And it’s also OK if bad social media habits are just as hard to change as bad habits IRL. You have the willpower, though, and I believe in you. If you can wean yourself off at least one or two of the faux pas on this list, there is a 95% chance that you will be at least 75% happier on a daily basis.*

*Real numbers. Not real proof.

Without further ado, here are 7 social media habits that you should try to fix as soon as possible:

Forget about the “Likes.”
Throw them to the wind! Don’t share things only because you think other people are going to like them – make sure your posts make you happy, inspired, or all of the above. Don’t obsess over numbers; numbers are gross. For instance, when you put a photo up on Instagram, don’t keep refreshing your profile until you finally hit double digit likes. You could be spending all that time hugging puppies. Think about it.

Stop thinking of social media as real life.
Sometimes, it feels like we live inside the Internet, but remember that every tweet has gone through five rewrites, every photo has gone through 50 filters, and every video has gone through 500 edits. As a wise meme once said, “Don’t compare your behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlight reel.” Sure, it’s cheesy, but it’s a good reminder not to mistake people’s vacations, relationships, and contouring to your normal day-to-day life. FOMO no mo’. Your cheekbones would look like that too with hours of artistry and three years in makeup school.

Don’t share articles only based on the headline.
Especially if you haven’t actually read the article. Falling for clickbait fills your newsfeed with sensationalist gobbledygook. Sharing an article you haven’t read is like recommending a restaurant where you haven’t eaten – it could be full of cockroaches! You might be retweeting a blog post that doesn’t represent you or your views.

No more vague-booking!
Please, oh please, make it stop. Vague-bookers are those who constantly write statuses, tweets, and captions that sort of allude to a problem, but not enough for anyone to understand anything about the actual circumstances. For example, a polite person might get rejected by a crush and text her BFF, “Can’t believe the day I’m having. Listening to sad Lana del Rey songs forever.” A vague-booker will type out those sad Lana del Rey lyrics and post them accompanied by twenty sad emojis. I’m not saying your social media needs to be limited to sunshine and daffodils, but don’t share elusive things in hopes of garnering a bunch of comments that say, “What’s wrong?”

Disconnect your accounts.
Think of each social media platform as a microphone in a stadium. Whenever you share something, it’s like yelling something into the microphone at all your friends in the stadium’s stands. Now, imagine if you connected a bunch of different speakers in different stadiums so that when you yell into one microphone, your words get repeated again and again in those other locations. That would be really annoying right? Hate to break it to you, but that’s pretty much what it’s like when you post a photo on Instagram and it gets reposted on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr.

Lay off the hashtags.
#I #mean #feel #free #to #use #hashtags #to #EXPRESSYOURSELF #but #maybe #think #twice #before #writing #whole #sentences #with #them

#follow4follow

Never send a Candy Crush request ever again.
If you value your friendships, nay, your life, cut it out with the Candy Crush notifications! Consider deleting the game from your phone, unless going cold turkey so quickly would cause you physical pain – addiction is a tricky mistress. Step one: Disable your account from Facebook. Step two: Every time you run out of lives, put your phone down. Try walking outside, breathing some fresh air. Step three: Use the new free time to write your first novel or build a cool tree house or find the cure for gaming app addictions. The world will thank you.

It can take a lot of time and effort to make these changes in your online life. Don’t worry and definitely don’t be too hard on yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was your Instagram following. Plus, if breaking bad social media habits proves to be way too painstaking, there’s a very simple solution.

#flush

(Images via here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.)

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