Social Media Detox: How To Unplug & Recharge

Ever feel like your phone has more control over your time than you do? A social media detox could be just what you need.

In today’s hyper-connected world, constant notifications and endless scrolling can leave us drained, distracted, and overwhelmed. 

Detoxing from social media isn’t about giving it up forever—it’s about finding balance and rediscovering what truly matters. 

In this post, I’ll share 16 actionable tips to help you reset your relationship with social media, unplug, and recharge. 

16 ways to detox from social media 

It’s never easy to break a bad habit—and detoxing from social media is no exception. Here are some things you can do to make it a little easier.

1. Write down your detox goals 

When starting your social media detox it’s a good idea to set out some clear goals. 

Think about why you want to step back from social media, and what you’d like to achieve from your detox. Some reasons you might want to detox include:

• Improve my focus
• Improve my mental and physical health
• Explore new hobbies
• Reconnect with the ‘real world’

Having a clear understanding of why you’re detoxing will help you to decide what changes are most important to you.

For example, if you want to improve focus you might consider locking apps and devices during your working hours. 

If you want to improve your mental health, you may want to replace social media time with more relaxing and mindful activities.

By aligning your detox with your goals, you’ll create a sustainable path toward a healthier digital balance.

The other benefit of writing down your goals is that it gives you something to refer back to when you’re struggling to resist temptation. Your goals will serve as a powerful reminder of why you set out on this journey and help to keep you motivated to carry on.

2. Tell your friends & family

Communicate with your family and friends to let them know you’re planning to cut back on social media ahead of time.

There are a few reasons I’d recommend doing this. 

First, it reassures them so they won’t worry when you’re not as active on social media. 

They’ll understand why you’re taking a break and not engaging with them as often as you usually might.

Secondly, it enables them to better support you.

 For example, if they know you’re trying to detox from social media, they’re probably not going to talk about it as much in front of you to avoid ‘tempting’ you back.

After all, the last thing you want when you’re trying to stay away from social media is your friend gossiping about someone’s post or showing you a funny TikTok video. 

Thirdly, it helps with accountability. 

Once you’ve told people what you’re trying to do, you’ll feel like you have something to prove. You’ll want to show them that you meant what you said and that you’re not going to fail, and that’ll help to keep you on track. 

3. Make it a group effort

Why not get your friends on board? Invite them to detox from social media with you and make it a group effort.

Not only is it more fun this way, but it also makes it more likely you’ll succeed as you can hold each other accountable.

If you want to take it a step further, you could even make it a competition. 

You could all agree to set up a tracker on your phones to monitor your social media usage, then check back in at a set date (e.g. in 30 days) to share your results. The person who spent the least time on social media wins!

4. Start gradually

It can be tempting to go ‘cold turkey’ and just point-blank refuse to use social media anymore, but I wouldn’t recommend going down this route.

If you have a social media addiction, cutting out social media cold turkey can be tough. You’re setting yourself up to fail. And when you fail, you might give up on the idea of a detox altogether.

Fortunately, a social media detox doesn’t mean you have to quit all apps and platforms all at once. 

It’s much better to start gradually. Begin by making some small changes to your relationship with social media before quitting altogether.

Small changes you could make include:

• Posting less
• Unfollowing accounts you don’t find helpful
• Calling friends or meeting in person rather than chatting on social media 
• Reducing the time you spend on social media by 5-10 minutes a day

Making these kinds of gradual changes to your habits can help you to start your detox journey, and work your way up to bigger changes in the future.

5. Set a new social schedule

Consider setting time limits to restrict when you can and can’t use social media.

Start by deciding how long you’re going to allow yourself to spend on social each day, e.g. 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, etc.

Then, make yourself a schedule that details specifically when you can use social media.

For example, you might decide that you can only use social media for 1 hour after work, between the hours 6 PM and 7 PM.

Or you might decide you’re not going to allow yourself to use social media after a certain cut-off point—-let’s say, 5 PM every day. 

You might even cut out social media on weekdays entirely, but allow yourself to use it whenever you want on the weekends. It all depends on you and your goals.

Here’s an extra tip: A lot of people tend to browse social media more at night before they go to bed. This is problematic as blue light from screens disrupts sleep, and overstimulating your brain at night can make it difficult to relax. 

So, I’d recommend setting a schedule in which you can’t use social media for at least 2 hours before you usually go to sleep. You’ll find it easier to unwind this way and you’ll wake up feeling more refreshed.

Note: If publishing content regularly to social networks is something you need to do for your business, you can still do that. You’ll just need to prepare content in advance and then setup a social scheduling tool like SocialBee or Pallyy. This will ensure you have a steady flow of content being published whilst you unplug.

6. Establish a ‘no-phone zone’

Instead of restricting the times you can use social media, you might want to restrict the places you can use it.

Pay attention to your habits and figure out if there are any ‘hot spots’ where you tend to spend the most time on social. Then, make those places ‘no-phone zones’.

For example, you might notice that you tend to plonk down on the couch in your living room after work and mindlessly scroll for hours. 

In that case, make the living room your no-phone zone, and don’t allow yourself to pick up your smartphone while you’re there. 

That way, if you get tempted to open up social media, you’ll have to stand up and change rooms first. That extra step will help to discourage you from spending time on social media too often.

7. Use apps to lock you out 

Resisting the temptation to open social media apps is the hardest part of social media detoxing. 

Willpower alone might not always be enough. For those times when your discipline crumbles, it helps to have something in place that physically stops you from slipping up.

One option is to use an app to block social media apps so you can’t access them in specific circumstances.

Most mobile phones have native apps that can do this, like Screen Time (iOS) and Digital Wellbeing (Android). You can find them on your mobile phone settings page. Aside from limiting your app usage, they can also send you screen time reports to help you monitor your activities.

There are also a bunch of third-party apps that can do the same sort of thing, some of which have advanced features you might find useful. 

For example, Lock My Phone lets you set up lock periods or location-based locks so you can only use your smartphone during certain hours and in certain places (you can still make emergency calls and answer calls).

Freedom can be used to block distracting apps and websites across your devices to help you stay away from social media. You can set up strict schedules for what sites you can use and when.

Forest is another useful app. It’s designed to help you stay focused and present. The idea is that you open it up for 30 minutes when you want to stay away from social media and focus on the task at hand. Over that 30 minutes, you’ll grow a digital tree.

The more time you spend away from other apps on your phone, the more trees grow in your forest. However if you switch to a different app before the 30 minutes is up, the tree currently growing dies. 

The app makers are also teamed up with a tree planting organization to plant real trees around the world, so you’ll be doing some good and helping to contribute to worldwide reforestation at the same time.

8. Turn social notifications off

If you don’t want to lock down your social apps, a less dramatic step you can take is to turn your social notifications off so they don’t entice you back in.

The steps to do this depend on your phone. In iPhones, simply go to Settings > Notifications. Then, click all of your social apps and turn the Allow Notifications toggle off for each of them.

This is a very small change that can nonetheless have a big impact. Without notifications popping up to let you know what you’re missing out on, you’ll find it easier to stay off social and stick to your schedule. 

9. Consider deleting your social apps (or even deactivating your accounts)

If you want to go cold turkey, you could remove social media apps completely from your phone—or even deactivate your accounts.

That way, you won’t be able to open up social media even if you want to, so there’s virtually no chance of slipping up. You’ll be forcing yourself to succeed.

Just make sure you only do this if you’re 100% sure you want to completely remove social media from your life. Because once you deactivate your account, there’s no going back.

If you don’t want to delete your social media apps, then you could at least delete them from your home screen to make them a little harder to access. Adding an extra click to the process of opening them up helps deter you from mindlessly scrolling at every opportunity.

10. Refresh your social media algorithms 

Detoxing from social media doesn’t even have to involve reducing the time you spend on social.

Instead, you might just want to simply change the way you use social media.

For example, you might want to reduce your social media consumption of certain types of content—content that you don’t think contributes positively to your mental well-being.

In that case, it’s a good idea to reset your social media algorithms. 

The way social media platforms work is they pay attention to what kind of content you engage with and show you more of that. 

So, you can end up getting trapped in a cycle of consuming unhealthy content that you’d rather see less of.

Fortunately, most platforms offer a way to reset the algorithm and ‘reboot’ your feed to start afresh. This is something I like to do every year or so.

The exact way to do it varies by network. For example, on Instagram, you can click the menu icon, then click Content preferences > Reset suggested content.

If a particular social platform doesn’t let you manually reset the algorithm, you can try unfollowing accounts/pages, changing your topics of interest, etc. to achieve the same thing. Alternatively, just delete your account and create a new one to start over but that usually isn’t an ideal option for various reasons.

11. Replace scrolling with new activities

When you stop using social media, there’s more time in the day to do other, more fulfilling things—so make the most of it.

Use your social media detox as an opportunity to read more, cook more, or start a new hobby.

Do more in-person activities. Go for hikes, exercise, and get out in nature. Instead of socializing online, socialize offline—meet up with friends, visit your relatives, make phone calls to a family member, etc.

I’d recommend avoiding too many online activities as the urge to open up a new tab and browse your socials will always be there when you’re on digital devices like your phone or desktop. 

12. Build healthy habits and routines

Creating healthy habits and routines will help provide a sense of structure in your day. 

This, in turn, helps keep you on track with your social media detox as you’ll have less downtime. You’re more prone to scrolling social when you’re at a loose end with nothing to do.

For example, you might start a new habit of doing 30 minutes of exercise every day after work when you’d usually be browsing through your Twitter feed.

You might begin a new morning routine in which you wake up, have a shower straight away, and eat a healthy breakfast, rather than lying in bed and scrolling on your phone. You get the idea. 

13. Practice mindfulness

Mindfulness is a powerful tool when it comes to breaking any addiction, including social media.

It’s all about being present and focusing your awareness on the present moment so you can better appreciate the here and now. 

There are lots of ways to practice mindfulness, including through visualizations and guided meditation, but one of the easiest ways to get started is through mindful breathing.

Whenever you get the urge to open up social media, focus instead on your breath. Take slow, deep breaths as you shift your attention to the sensation of the air coming in through your nostrils and out through your mouth, and note the rise and fall of your chest.

There are plenty of tutorials you can watch to learn more about mindful breathing and how to practice it. The Headspace app is particularly good.

14. Log your journey (and share your experience)

Log your social media detox journey to keep track of how it’s going. This will help you to stay focused on your goals.

You could start a journal or make notes in your diary about your progress, what you’ve achieved each day, what you’ve done in the time you’d usually spend on social, how it’s made you feel, and so on.

Once you’ve finished your detox, you could even share your experience with others as a way to celebrate what you’ve achieved and motivate others to follow in your footsteps.

15. Avoid ‘all or nothing’ thinking

‘All or nothing’ thinking is one of the biggest barriers preventing people from making positive changes. 

It refers to situations when your discipline slips and you fail in one of your goals, which leads you to subsequently give up entirely on the whole thing.

For example, let’s say you’re trying to eat a healthy diet and cut out junk food.

One day, you can’t resist a slice of pizza at a party. But because you ate that slice of pizza, you feel like a failure, so you give up on the whole idea and binge eat for the rest of the month. 

You didn’t achieve everything you set out to achieve, so you decide that you may as well achieve nothing. This kind of thinking isn’t helpful.

The same thing can happen with a social media detox. There might be days when you fail to meet your goals and spend more time on social media than you wanted to.

If/when this happens, try not to beat yourself up and let it spiral out of control. Instead, tell yourself that it’s okay to slip up once in a while. 

Remind yourself of what you’re aiming for, get back on the train, and keep working towards your goals. Don’t fall into the ‘all or nothing’ trap.

16. Carefully reintroduce social media back into your life

Once you’ve had a break and finished your detox, you might decide to rejoin the digital world and reintroduce social media back into your life.

That’s fine—but be careful.

Don’t yo-yo back to using social media more than you really should. Remember why you felt you had to detox in the first place and make positive changes to your relationship with social media going forward.

For example, during your social media break, you might have only allowed yourself to use it for 30 minutes a day. 

Now that you’re finished, you might increase that to 1-2 hours a day, but no more than that. 

The benefits of a social media detox 

Before we wrap up, let’s remind ourselves of why it’s worth detoxing from social media in the first place. Here are some of the benefits it offers:

• Improved mental health. Excessive social media use can lead to issues like anxiety and depression. Stepping away from social media can help you to reset and improve your mental health and wellbeing.
• Improved self-esteem. People show a curated, polished version of their lives on social media. If you’re constantly comparing yourself to the people you see on social media, it can lead to unrealistic expectations and negatively impact your self-esteem. Detoxing gives you a break from these comparisons and time to build healthier self-worth.
• Improved productivity. The less time you spend on social media distractions, the more time you can spend working towards your work, financial, or personal goals. 
• More free time. Cutting out social media frees up time for you to spend on other things you enjoy. That might be gaming, reading, writing, exercising, or anything else.
• Better relationships with others. Taking a break from social media offers you time to spend reconnecting with the people you love in person, which can help you build deeper, more meaningful relationships.

Final thoughts

That concludes our guide to social media detoxing. 

Remember: These are just tips to help you achieve your goals. Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong approach—it’s up to you. The most important thing is to exercise discipline and stick to your plan.

Want to learn how other people use social media? Check out these 30+ eye-opening social media statistics.

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