In the last article, I talked about how keeping your outward environment orderly would help you to be in a better frame of mind for dealing with inward stress. Well, the time has come my friends, to embark on that journey to a calmer sense of self. However, the next step involves more de-cluttering and re-organizing, but of a different kind altogether. We’ve got to clean up our social media presence and set boundaries on how much we use it. Now, as you all collectively roll your eyes and groan from the depths of your being, pause for a bit and just hear me out. If you want to have time to do the things you love or to pursue dreams that have yet to become reality, then this is a step you cannot skip.

I’ll start with a personal experience. I never had a smartphone until about a year ago. Yup, you heard me right. I actually lived without a smartphone. Obviously, the world is changing, and I knew I’d have to jump on the band wagon at some point. I’ll even admit that I was really excited about it at first. I began to text my friends for the first time, I could check my emails whenever I wanted to, and I had 24-hour access to Pinterest. Things were looking pretty good, until I tried to cut corners. I began using texting lingo and allowing auto-correct to fix my spelling mistakes. I also began using my thumbs to text. Inside of 2 weeks, my hands began to ache badly, and texting with my thumbs was the only thing I could trace it back to. I would sit down to type out an email, and my fingers forgot where everything was on the keyboard. Now, as you can probably tell, writing means a lot to me, so when I began to forget proper grammar after only having my iPhone for 2 weeks, I started freaking out. I was not going to let my talent suffer at the expense of texting someone faster. This had to stop, and right now. I now make sure that I text the hard way and I do every capital letter and apostrophe myself. I only use my index finger too, because my hands hurt enough after a loaded semester. I had set a strict boundary line, and I stuck to it.

Social media is probably the thing that encroaches upon our lives the most. It may seem fun and innocuous, but it’s such a huge time-sucker. Four hours at a time on Pinterest or Instagram, anyone? I know I’m guilty of it. Those amazing recipes and cute puppy pictures are so incredibly fun to browse through, but I also could have spent four hours actually trying out one of those recipes, or actually playing with my dog in the fresh air. It seems like social media gives us an escape route to pretend that we’re living the life we want to live, or to feel “connected” to others who share the same thoughts and values. But we spend so much time checking our phones to “stay connected,” that we lose the real-life connection with real people and experiences. In the long run, the days just blend together and we can barely notice or properly appreciate the special moments that crop up to make life interesting. Plus, social media reaches everyone, so we begin to feel compelled to control how we are perceived by others. We want to be liked, appreciated, and valued, but trying to achieve that on the Web comes at the expense of sacrificing your authenticity as an individual. We feel admired online, so we try and become that online version of ourselves in real life. Who cares what everyone else thinks? The opinions of others can make or break you, only if you allow it. I’d like to direct you to two helpful quotes:

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” –Bernard M. Baruch

You see, social media presents an illusion of what life should be like, and we all fall into the trap of trying to meet those impossibly high standards. Never feeling like you measure up, and constantly trying to either ignore or escape real life through attachment to your device, is part of what cause people to just exist, instead of actively participating in the great adventure of living.

Now, in our digital age, it makes sense to have some social media accounts for work or school purposes, if you’re active in volunteering, or maybe you have a small business or hobby that you really want to develop and share. The first step in cleaning it all out is to just get rid of the junk mail. Don’t save that link that you’ve been meaning to read for the past two years, and get rid of all those old coupon emails. If there’s something you really want to save, print it out and file it away, or make a digital file for all those recipes you’re eventually going to get through. Just like cleaning out your old clothes and replacing them with quality pieces that will last you for a while, everything digital has to go through the same process. Every now and then, I do an “email dump,” and I get rid of all the things I never read, the coupons I forgot to use, and the invite from 6 months ago. Once you trash the extraneous stuff, you can sort through the things that hold more importance. Obviously, make sure you have both digital and/or printed copies of anything finance-related.

When it comes to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr, Snapchat, Fitbit, etc. (that’s it, I’m not counting anymore), try to gauge which apps you use the most, and get rid of the others that are just taking up your storage space. If you’re into photography, then Instagram is probably a keeper for you. However, if you barely check Twitter and you can’t remember why you have an account in the first place, then what’s the point? You’ve got things to do, places to go, and people to see! Once you ditch the unused apps, then it would be best to begin setting some boundaries as to how much digital influence you allow in your daily life. For those of us who need to be on our devices for work, spending a significant amount of time on the phone or computer is to be expected. Students are always checking emails, submitting assignments, or writing papers, and that’s just part of earning an education. However, when you don’t need to be on a device, then turn it off. It’s as simple as that. Work should not be allowed to interfere with your personal life, at least to the furthest extent possible. Our society doesn’t like to take “no” for an answer, so there must be a boundary line set to prevent that constant pressure. My dad would ignore any emails that showed up in his inbox once he was out of work. “If it was that important,” he’d say, “they would have told me before I left the office.” As the millennial generation begins to graduate college and enter the workforce, it is more important than ever to keep our online presence clean. Only like pages that both express what you are interested in, while keeping things professional and polished. Employers are not going to be amused by that SpongeBob meme or by any wild party pictures.

It’s time for our social media to grow up with us. Stop trying to impress or be noticed by everyone else. You are your own constant companion, so put your best effort into developing you and start living life. You’re worth it, and you owe it to yourself to take steps to restore your peace of mind. Setting guidelines for how you use the Internet is essential to achieve this goal. Keep it classy and keep it under tight control. You’ll delete the junk mail from your mind, and instead of holding on to insecurities and worries, your brain will have a lot more storage space for learning new things and making memories.