How to Block Social Media for Your Dignity
The Royal Society of Public Health just released a report containing what you already knew about social media: it’s not good for you.
The report , titled “#StatusOfMind: Social Media and Youth Mental Health and Well-being,” details the impact of social media on young people between the ages of 14 and 24. The results show a marked negative impact on the emotional well-being of social media users. … People who used social media for more than two hours a day were more likely to report symptoms of depression, poor sleep, and increased anxiety. Women, from teens to adults, reported more anxiety about their body image after using Facebook compared to those who did not.
The study ranked the most popular social media platforms based on a survey of over 1,400 people and found Instagram to be the worst perpetrator among the top five sites: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube, with the latter picking up a single network. positive answer in the survey.
While the study is neither hopeless nor gloomy – the positive aspects found in the report include the growth of positive self-expression and community building among peers – it does show that too much good can harm your health. If you want to curb the ramifications of being in the know (and staying up late) without going to nuk and deleting all of your accounts, a little moderation might be the answer.
Site blocker extensions
Out of habit, the first letters I hit on my keyboard every morning are usually “fooling around” before I catch myself. Muscle memory is a bitch and sometimes the only way to break a habit is to stop receiving its rewards. This is where a site blocker comes into play. Free extensions like StayFocusd and WasteNoTime work with your web browser of choice and allow you to block sites that you find distracting or unhealthy.
You can block sites by time of day, time spent browsing, or even exclude them from your work week. On days where I wanted to avoid tweeting by setting aside a few minutes a day for a list of distracted sites, keeping me on top of the news without letting me brighten up the rest of my week. After about 10 minutes, the StayFocusd extension will update my distracting site and replace it with a helpful message: “Shouldn’t you be working right now?” Inspirational.
If you want to know exactly how much time you look at a GIF-image of a dog licking churros, on Twitter, an application for tracking time Rescuetime will track the time you are wasting on websites and within apps. It’s free, but for $ 9 a month, you can access more detailed reports and block sites for specific periods of time. It even has a one-click “offline” mode that blocks any internet access for a specified period.
Router Filters
Chrome extensions don’t work on mobile devices like iPhones or tablets, so blocking social sites gets a little trickier. Luckily, you can disable them on the go, preventing them from even accessing your devices by setting up a domain name server. Domain name servers, usually provided by your ISP, translate the URLs of sites like lifehacker.com into IP addresses, which then allows you to access the site in question. Services such as DNSFilter and OpenDNS (a closed source service from Cisco with a strange name) give you more control over what can and what cannot go through your network thanks to filtering capabilities.
You can block sites by category or specify which sites you want to block access to your browser. This means that you and anyone on your network will not be able to access blocked sites, so be sure to check with your roommates or partner before tinkering with your network settings.
OpenDNS offers a free version of its filtering service, but you can pay $ 19.95 for a year of more granular monitoring and recording of your internet logs. DNSFilter charges $ 5 per month for each network.
Application blockers
I know this is played out to say “there is an app for that,” but if you’re looking for an app on your phone to stop wasting time on your phone, well … yeah. You won’t need to change your router settings, but you may have to spend a little money if you use a service like Freedom . It works on PCs and Macs as well as iOS devices (an Android app is in development) and creates a VPN-like service that, by refraining from connecting to an external service, can block content from your device. You can schedule blocked times, activate them on the fly, and sync blocked sites with your devices. Freedom’s monthly plan starts at $ 6.99, although you can get an annual plan for an annual subscription for $ 29.