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I've just finished a month away from social media. It was a refreshing break, and due to a few intentional habits I've been building up over the year, it was much easier than I expected: it didn't feel like a grand challenge at all. I wanted to intentionally reclaim some of my (often scattered) attention, while still keeping up with my friends and colleagues and with the tech world at large. Now that I'm at the end I'd call it a success! And I'd do it again too: I didn't feel like I gave up much at all.

I'd like to share with you what I did to build a healthier relationship with social media, what worked for me, and what didn't.

I tried a lot of things leading up to the 1 month break to reduce my social media use without cutting it off completely. For me, pure self control was off the table. It doesn't work for me, and it doesn't work for millions of other people stuck in the social media dopamine cycle. Maybe you can successfully self-regulate to a healthy relationship with social media: in that case, congrats. But if you're reading this, there's a high chance you're like me, and struggle in some way to disconnect, and maybe you'd like to take some detox time, too.

First, a bit of background on why I did this. I have been completely addicted to twitter for a few years now. It was a reasonable vice that served me well for a long time. I found my job at Replit through a few employees who were active on twitter, and during my tenure there I built some great connections and established a name for myself in the tech world. I've had maybe half a dozen serious job opportunities come through twitter, and chatted with folks I'd never have reached otherwise. A pretty good result for what I'd mostly describe as just being a nerd on social media.

For all its upsides, I probably don't have to explain the downsides of being constantly logged in online. I could easily get distracted during my workday, while hanging out with friends, or even just spending time with my partner at home. It was too easy for a notification or just impulse to get me looking at my phone instead of being present in the moment.

I really wanted to be better. I tried any number of tricks that just made it marginally more difficult to get on social media, and none of them worked for me. I kept failing, over and over, and that was demoralizing.

Examples:

• removing the app from my phone (I'd go straight to the browser instead, or get just as distracted on my computer)
• using apple's screen time feature (it's two taps to ignore. I'd dismiss it before even consciously realizing what I'd done)
• logging myself out (once I log back in, I'd forget to keep logging out again).

Mostly these methods failed, and as a consequence, I felt like a failure. But this wasn't my fault! These apps are designed to be addictive, and habit forming.

What really changed things for me was a stronger blocking app than apple's flimsy one. Since around March I've been using Opal, though there's lots of alternatives that might suit your preference.

(apple's screen time limits)

Apple's screen time limits were time based. Once you hit that time for the day, you were "cut off" - except like I mentioned earlier, it's just two taps to remove your limit for the day. I felt like these limits encouraged me to hit them: I was "missing out" if I didn't "make use of" my scheduled limit. Sometimes I would hit my time limit before getting out of bed in the morning. Can you think of a worse way to start the day? These limits weren't aware of the times when I was busy and wanted to be distraction free versus when I had free time that it was "okay" to be on my phone.

Opal, on the other hand, uses a different strategy. It also has time limits, but I've never set them up. instead, it's based around schedules, during which time the apps are blocked completely with a much harder to circumvent blocker. Over a few months, I slowly added more and more time that was "social media free" each week. I started with Tuesdays and Thursdays during work hours: my company's "deep work" days. Then, I blocked distracting sites before work. I kept adding on bit by bit, as I noticed what times in my life I was distracted and regretted it, and what times I felt it was okay to relax and spend some time on my phone to decompress.

My current system now blocks social media:

• during deep work days all day (T/Th)
• during all other work hours except lunchtime M/W/F
• before work
• during the evening and until I go to sleep, except for a couple hours around dinnertime
• before noon on the weekends

In the inverse, this means my social media time can be:

• lunchtime on non focus days
• before/after dinner
• afternoons on the weekends

I expected to feel like this would "break my bad habits" of overusing social media. Instead, I'd phrase it slightly differently: I think this helped me build healthy habits: I could use my phone as much as I wanted during the times that I allowed above, and didn't have to feel bad about overusing it. Once it was time to do something else, I'd be locked out: It was no longer on me to self-impose logging off, the computer did it for me.

Once I'd established what I felt were healthy habits around using social media, taking a one month break entirely didn't feel like a big change at all. I barely missed it. I could do it again, no problem. I don't think I would've had this feeling if (1) I didn't have a tool that could successfully lock me out of my social media without a way to circumvent it, and (2) if I had tried to do it "cold turkey" rather than with the aim of building healthy routines over time.

What most surprised me about this endeavor was that in the end, it didn't feel like a challenge of willpower. I don't feel like every day I'm making a grand choice to do the right thing. I don't think I want to feel that way. I don't want to be fighting for my attention every day: I just don't want to be distracted! The folks running these apps have a whole lot more money and time invested into getting me hooked than I have at my disposal to fight back. I really believe that doing the right thing should feel easy, not hard, and I think after many months of experimentation I've found what works best for me.

I'd love to hear from you: have you struggled with social media or screen time boundaries? What worked for you, and what didn't?