Quick guide: How to cleanse your social media feed

Another day, another endless scroll

Another day, another endless scroll. Cat videos, stand-up clips, ad. Starlet heading to the airport, starlet heading to the gym, starlet heading to the restaurant, ad. Khaby, toxic gyaan, unboxing, ad. Right-wing propaganda, left-wing nonsense, chicken wing recipe, ad.

Actor Tom Holland went on an IG detox and returned only to reveal he was taking a social media break to focus on his mental health (@tomholland201)

Why is your feed, and everyone else’s, such a waste of time? It’s because individual social media users rarely fight back against automated curation – timelines driven by what your friends like, what advertisers think you want, and which subjects you’ve shown mild interest in.

Beat the bots at their own game with tips from Rohit Agrawal, a social media strategist, life coach Chetna Chakravarty, Shreya Verma, a social media manager of a beauty brand, and Dr Neha Jaiswal, a psychologist, who is currently researching social media and its impact on mental health at University of Nottingham, UK.

Mute, unfollow, snooze: It’s the holy trinity of digital detoxing. “If certain people/pages/accounts make you feel bad, do not feel guilty about unfollowing them,” says Dr Jaiswal. You’ll avoid falling into the self-loathing trap where you start comparing your everyday life to someone’s online one. Influencers who seem to live permanently in the Maldives and shop in Dubai, eat foamy Michelin-starred meals in rural Spain – they’re not enriching your life. So mute away.

Actor Millie Bobby Brown has spoken about deleting all social media apps from her phone (AFP)

Or just block: Especially when users, even close friends, present negativity and cynicism on social media, interfering with your positivity. “Follow people and organisations that are aligned with your values,” says Dr Jaiswal. Unfriending people isn’t always feasible – perhaps you don’t want to offend a family member. Instead, hide their posts from your feed.

Instagram lets you take a break from seeing posts from people you don’t know for 30 days at a time. “To snooze recommended posts by Instagram, find one in your feed and tap the three dots in the upper right corner,” says Agrawal. “Then choose Not Interested. Instagram will hide the post and give you a menu of choices. ‘Tap Snooze all suggested posts in feed for 30 days’.” A month later, when new recommendations arrive, and you’re still not impressed, snooze them again.

“Social media today is more complicated than we think. Whatever time you invest in it, make sure it brings you a sense of happiness, knowledge, inspire you rather than bring you down,” says Dr Jaiswal.

Be your own curator: If you had to list out the subjects that interest you, it’s likely that the usual posts online wouldn’t be part of it. Customise your experience. Like books? Follow 10 authors or publishers. Culture intrigues you? Follow museums from far-flung cities. Prefer wildlife to pet cats? There’s a whole corner of social media devoted to rescue and conservation. Add these to your Favourites so they are prioritised.

“One of the ways to curate your social media timeline is to list people whose content you enjoy the most,” says life coach Chetna Chakravarty. “We have the mindspace for content from only five or six people at a time. Look for the accounts you genuinely like, favourite them, like and share their posts, and your feed will automatically get curated. If you stop paying attention to content you don’t like, it will eventually stop appearing on your feed.”

Musician Ed Sheeran got rid of his smartphone altogether, to refrain from scrolling through them

Take control of your feed: Consider filtering comments to avoid having to deal with aggressive and offensive online responses. “On Instagram, you can block certain words or phrases, so any comments, including those words won’t show up on your posts,” says Agrawal. You can also turn off the comment section on specific Instagram posts, shutting down the negativity at the root.

“On Twitter, a user may produce great original content, but have terrible taste in other people’s tweets. If you want to only see their tweets and not the tweets they have retweeted, go to their profile page, click the cog, and select ‘Turn off retweets’. This will help your Twitter timeline show you more original content,” recommends Agrawal.

Take a time check: With Creator Studio and similar content-scheduling apps, you can have better control over when you are active on your own accounts. “It allows us to plan content ahead, take a break from social media and avoid chatty friends and relatives. We can respond to them later and manage our social media and life better,” says Verma.

She also has a hack for Instagram users who are tired of unwanted ads and suggested posts. “If you access Instagram from your internet browser [as opposed to the app], you won’t find ads or suggested posts — just dozens of still photos which a lot of us prefer.”

From HT Brunch, January 28, 2023

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