Hey! I'm a pixel artist here! Sometimes I'll write Aseprite tutorials and I have a portfolio on Cara. I'm not entirely sure if linking those are allowed, but anyway today I want to talk about something a bit different rather than pixel art or tutorials. Instead I want to talk about limiting social media distractions and why I think we all should, but not cut it all out entirely either.
Why?
There are a few key reasons why I think we should limit social media use per day:
- Prevent wasting a few hours per day
- Gradually reclaim peace of mind
- Save your energy
Common Types Of Distractions
- Doom-Scrolling
- Self-Improvement Videos
- Even just scrolling... honestly
Doom Scrolling
Doom Scrolling is a specific kind of digital scrolling habit... and is probably the WORST out of all of the distractions. All you're doing is endlessly looking at global pessimism like:
- Inflation
- Wars
- Loneliness
- etc.
It's a waste of time--and for some reason--highly addictive!
Doom Scrolling Drains The Most Energy!
You may just think doom-scrolling is spending some time scrolling on the internet, but do you ever realize that after you stop, you're not in the mood to do anything else or feel angry or sad? I can't say doom-scrolling is the only cause, but it could be a huge reason if you're doing this everyday.
Self-Improvement Videos (Hustle Culture)
Self-improvement content often sounds nice in theory, but most that content on the internet boils down to: work hard to succeed. But the problem is hard work isn't defined. You can literally make up whatever you think hard work is but everyone will have their own definition. And then you might make up a formula for yourself like:
A x B = C
-----------
Where...
A = Effort
B = Reward per unit of effort
C = Total success
This formula is very linear, and practically only works for fitness or leveling up in video games as far as I know... basically things where the math is predictable and generally works, so I can write these as general examples:
Videogame Example
Let's say...
A = Number of goblins you killed
B = XP per goblin
C = Total XP gained
If you kill 5 goblins and each gives 10 XP, well you get 50XP.
Fitness Example
I love doing my pull-ups so let's say...
A = Number of pullups
B = Muscle cells gained per pull-up or something
C = Total muscle cells I gain
Okay well then if I do 20 pullups and I gain 2 muscle cell per pull up, then I gain 40 muscle cells.
Maybe that wasn't a great example, but it wasn't supposed to because self improvement videos were never supposed to make sense anyway. They're there to steal your attention and watch time endlessly. Moving on.
Even Just Scrolling Is Draining
So this one is tricky because it's subconscious! It's scrolling any social media app, but it doesn't feel toxic; just a "neutral" or boring time-sink. This is still an energy drain, just not as bad as doom-scrolling. Occasionally you might see some exciting new game or piece of art and that's fine, but over time--at least for me--I've became very numb and desensitized to scrolling social media apps.
Some Quick Tips...
"Nuking" Your Youtube Homepage
My YouTube homepage became INCREDIBLY toxic over the past several years. I'd say it became 95% doom-scroll content. So what I did was I just went over to my YouTube watch history a few days ago, cleared it, and paused it. Now it looks like this:
Now it's nothing but a search bar and some channel subscriptions. I did this because I've noticed that every time I saw a thumbnail on the homepage (especially when it auto-plays), I'd have an urge to click it, immediately get bored, then scroll for a different random video, hoping a good one would come up, but it's extremely rare because I've became so desensitized to the majority of homepage recommendations at this point.
Limiting Common Social Media Apps (Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram, etc.)
Limiting common social media apps is generally not as straightforward and it does take some willpower still I guess, but you can set up some daily limit rules and I don't think these apps should be entirely cut out of your lives either.
My Common Limit Rules
I'm a pixel art freelancer and I also occasionally write Aseprite tutorials in this forum in the art discussions, but these things require time and energy. I have to do whatever I can to fight for this free time. I'm not perfect at avoiding these social media apps all the time, and I don't think you should fully do that either because that can cause loneliness, but I completely deleted my Twitter account a few years back and so now I only have Bluesky and Youtube in terms of social media distractions. The other thing that helps me is to just completely avoid the main feed of these apps on most days. It's very easy to get caught in that and I will never forget how toxic the main-feed/home-page of Twitter and Youtube could be. Now instead I made a practice of just taking a few quick glances at social media throughout the day, generally to post art, art tutorials, or check what a few of my closer friends are up to, but there's not a whole lot to do on these apps most of the time in my opinion. Generally I limit my "glance check-ins" to maybe 3-5 times a day and each glance is only like ~1-2 minutes. There are exceptions where I'll slip up and go over... or even do better and not use it at all some days, but the main thing is I don't like to get caught up in the main feed of these apps. The main feed can be the absolute most distracting thing about social media apps whether they're toxic or not.
Conclusion
So those are my thoughts on social media and how to reduce time spent using them. I hope this encourages some of you so that you can spend my time making games, creating art, music, or even just gaming or fishing or whatever. I'm not here to judge how you spend your free time, but I highly encourage you to try at least nuking your YouTube homepage because that was probably the most awesome thing I did recently. Thanks for reading! If you want to visit some of my Aseprite art tutorials, you can access them below.