You probably know it. You pick up your phone to take a quick look at Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. You put your phone away and after 10 minutes you pick it up again. Then you’ve been scrolling through these apps for half an hour and you’ve lost track of time. Oops, I didn’t mean to scroll that long at all. To spend less time on your phone, set time limits on your social media apps. Are you also addicted to your phone? We would like to give you a number of reasons why this is a good idea.
Time limits on your apps
The feature to put a time limit on your apps hasn’t been around for very long. First we have to do it with our own notebook or our screen time to see how much we use certain apps. The advantage of the built-in time limits is that you receive a notification when you use your apps for a certain period of time. This way you will never spend too long on your social media apps again. Spending too much time on social media has quite a few disadvantages. This makes you less productive, makes many people insecure and actually wastes your time by scrolling uselessly. But what other reasons to set these time limits?
Insight into your social media use
The first reason to set time limits on your social media apps is to gain insight into your social media use. You are probably not yet aware of how many hours you spend on social media if you are not yet using time limits. By setting a time limit (of half an hour, for example), you get a reflection that you have already been using your social media app for half an hour and that it has probably gone by in no time. To reduce your social media use, the first step is to gain insight into your social media use. These time limits will help you with this. You probably don’t realize how many hours you spend scrolling.
More time for other things
By setting time limits on your social media apps, you have more time for other things. Is the half hour of scrolling on TikTok over? Then this limit forces you to do other things. You now have more time for chores that you still had to finish, for your self-care or to meet up with friends. It sounds so obvious all these things, but when you spend half your day on social media, you appreciate these moments even more. You will soon notice that you are becoming a lot more productive.
Better sleep
Did you know that looking at your screen too much causes you to sleep less well? Sometimes it feels like you’re getting square eyes from staring at your screen for so long. This will certainly improve your sleep, especially if you set your phone so that you can no longer open certain social media apps after a certain time. Instead, read a book before going to sleep or do yoga. And sleep is very important for you, so this seems like a very good reason to set time limits.
