3 Sneaky Ways to Make Social Media Less Stressful

Daniel is a writer who focuses on blogging about happiness and motivation at Lifehack.

If you ever feel overwhelmed by a never-ending stream of Facebook notifications, this article is for you. These three sneaky ways to make social media less stressful will change your Facebook feed into a more peaceful place.

1. Delete Hateful People to Make Facebook a Happier Place

Ain’t nobody got time for negativity. If a person complains 24/7, leaves hateful comments or sends excessive game requests… it’s time to break up.

When making important decisions, it’s smart to consider all variables. But there’s nothing wrong with having a slight case of tunnel vision on social media, where the whole point is to connect with people you care about. Ain’t nobody got time for negative Neds and Nancys.

Also, ladies – here’s your opportunity to dump all those guys who are leaving creepy comments on your photos, or bothering you with excessive messages. If someone views you as a sexual object and nothing more, then they are unworthy of your friendship. You deserve to be surrounded by true friends who love and accept you for the unique person you are (read: they’re not just in it for the booty).

If you’d like to make your feed a more positive place, follow these steps:

Access Facebook via your browser or cellphone
Navigate to your profile
Click the link to “friends”
Scroll all the way to the bottom, because it lists them in order of relevancy (this means the people you actually talk to on a regular basis should be near the top).
Start there and work your way up to the top, clicking the “unfriend” button next to the names of people you’re friends with for no good reason

Note: If a picture isn’t displayed, do NOT click that link. If there is no photo, they have deactivated their profile, and clicking “unfriend” will make your screen refresh. I’m not sure why this happens, but it is what it is. If you are obsessive compulsive like me, get a pen and paper and make a list of those people’s names. You can search for and delete them one at a time after you’re done with the rest.

2. Organize Your Friends into Lists to Connect with the People You Care About

Don’t simply broadcast status updates to everybody you know. Instead, sort your friends into separate “lists” (click here for a tutorial). To illustrate why this would be beneficial, you could create these six categories:

1. Family
2. Co-workers
3. Networking/business contacts
4. Good friends who know a bit about you
5. REALLY good friends who know a lot about you
6. BFFs who know so many of your secrets that they could write your biography

You probably wouldn’t share a juicy detail you told your BFF with your cousin, would you? Different kinds of updates will resonate with different individuals in your life. This is exactly why lists exist. Use them.

3. Disable Annoying Emails and Notifications that Distract You from What’s Important

Don’t think those brief excursions to Facebook in the middle of the day add up? Allow me to prove you wrong. Let’s assume you open the FB app on your phone twenty times per day to check your notifications. For the sake of example, let’s say you end up browsing for three minutes per log-in:

20 log-ins per day X 3 minutes per log-in = 60 minutes per day

Do that every day for a week, and you would be out seven hours per week. I know it might not feel like a big deal when you check your phone in the middle of the day, but that time can add up if you get carried away with it. If you’d like to remove the temptation of instant notifications, simply follow the instructions at the help articles linked below:

I hope these three tips help you make social media less stressful. Don’t feel bad for unfriending people and unsubscribing from updates, because the whole point of social media is to connect with people you care about.

Featured photo credit: Intense woman at work/jseliger2 via flickr.com