4 powerful habits to overcome social media addiction!

Modern life without social media is unthinkable. To keep pace with the world, everyone need to connect, interact, and learn.

Social media makes these things easy. It gives us joyful moments with people around the world.

Now, here is the catch.

Sometimes, we forget when to pause.

Every time you feel happy or excited, your brain releases more dopamine^[1][2]. As a result, your brain urges you to repeat the activity to get that feeling again.

This is simply how your brain works!

That’s why every time you win a game, taste something delicious, or feel valued, you get that dopamine. This drives the urge to experience those moments again and again.

Hopefully, you now understand how social media addiction develops. Next, let’s talk about how to prevent it.

How to overcome social media addiction?

Like most people, I won’t advise you to stop using social media. NO, I never will!

It’s a handy tool for entertainment.

Instead, I will share powerful habits to completely stop the addiction, not the usage.

Yes, you read that right!

Follow the four habits below. Then you can easily decide whether to stop using social media or continue using it without addiction.

They are:

1. Leave the App: Use social media only on a web browser (e.g., Chrome, Brave, Firefox, Microsoft Edge) instead of its app.
2. Go Incognito: Always open social media in “Incognito Mode” or “Private Mode” whenever you decide to use it.
3. Make your password complicated: Keep your password long and complex (a combination of special characters, numbers, lowercase letters, and uppercase letters). Do you forget long passwords too often, as I do? Then write a hint for the password, not the password itself.
4. No Posting: Reduce or completely stop posting anything. Also, don’t react to anyone’s posts (no likes, comments or shares).

Now, you might be wondering why these habits work. I’ve got you.

Reasons to follow these four habits

1. Escaping the hooking trap: When you use a social media app, it continuously sends notifications about your activity or others’ activity. This is done to pull you back into the app. This technique is called hooking. It’s proven that having an app on your smartphone encourages you to use it more than the website version^[3][4]. That’s why many websites keep asking you to install their app. To reduce addiction, use the website, not the app.
2. The power of “Friction”: This is where the real magic happens. By using Incognito or Private Mode and a complex password for every session, you create friction. You are intentionally making the login process irritating. This irritation tells your brain “I’m too tired to login again”. It creates enough friction to stop you from mindlessly opening social media.
3. Breaking the validation loop: Every time you post something (text, images or videos), each time you receive likes, comments, or both. Post something > Get reactions > Feel happy > Post again. This loop pushes you to post more and more. To avoid falling into this trap, stop posting anything. Similarly, don’t react on others’ posts. Otherwise, it will also do the same to you. That is: React to something > Others get noticed > Feel happy > React again.

By following those habits, you still enjoy the content like I do—but without becoming a slave of the engagement game.

The Reality Check

I won’t lie to you – the first few days will be difficult to follow. But once you stick to them, you will start noticing the difference immediately.

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