Finding yourself constantly on social media apps on your phone, chatting to friends and family, keeping up with their lives and the news, and generally getting pulled into the apps’ time-sucking vortex? And, when you finally lift your head up, discovering you’ve missed your bus stop, almost walked into a busy street or entirely missed what someone was trying to tell you?
It’s not ideal, really. But it happens all the time. And, when you think about the fact there are entire teams at the apps’ HQs dedicated to finding ways to make you stay on them longer, therefore making the apps more marketable, it’s no wonder you’re addicted to them, really.
So, if that’s the case, why not try deleting social media apps from your phone? And before you roll your eyes at me, muttering ‘there’s no way in hell’, hear me out: you can still access the platform’s content from your phone — just through a web browser, instead of the app.
I deleted the Facebook app from my phone years ago (do you have any idea how much memory it takes up on your phone? A lot!), and I haven’t looked back since. If I do need to access Facebook on my phone, for whatever reason, I’ll go into Safari and use its mobile site.
The site is definitely not as user-friendly — to be honest, it’s pretty clunky, especially if you’re used to the app — and it doesn’t let you do everything you can do on the app — I tried to update a Facebook Marketplace listing the other day from Safari and couldn’t — but mostly, I don’t need to do whatever I can’t do that very second anyway. It was probably better for me to be present where I was than burying my head in my phone updating Facebook Marketplace. That could wait until I was home, at my laptop.
I do have to mention, though, that I do have the Facebook Messenger app. But because that’s a pretty bare-bones messaging app, it doesn’t allow for much mindless scrolling — I only use it for messaging.
While I haven’t yet tried deleting the Instagram app, considering that’s where I spend most of my time on my phone, I’m keen to give it a go. Accessing Instagram through your browser means you won’t see ‘Suggested Reels’, ‘Suggested Posts’ or sponsored content. This means I’ll most definitely be spending a lot less time on it. Twitter is another platform you can also access through your browser. As is TikTok.
If you’re spending far too much time on your phone and want to spend less, it’s something to consider: deleting social media apps from your phone. The bonus is that it’ll free up your phone’s memory, letting you take more photos, and that you’ll likely be using a lot less data. Sounds like a win-win-win to me.
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