From Scrolling to Strolling: How I Outsmarted Social Media with This One Weird Browser Trick

We know that creating systems is one way to be more productive, but another thing we have all heard about and possibly done is reducing our social media screen time.

It's not a new topic. We've all seen headlines like "The Dangers of TikTok That Are Worth Your Attention" and "Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health".

I used to read these and think to myself, "I should just delete them because I have control." But do I really have control? Or are these platforms regulating what I do to some degree?

Since school, I have been on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. Honestly, I never really used Twitter before, but that's a different story. In the last three years, TikTok has become a big part of my life, and before going to bed I would watch it for 30 minutes as a reward.

Spoiler alert: those 30 minutes would often turn into three hours!

But I can set a screen time limit on my phone and not use these apps, right? Well, if you can do it and not click "Allow for Another 15 Minutes" six times before you actually close the app, then all the power to you. Most of us are not that great at it, especially me.

When I was reading Atomic Habits by James Clear (which, in today's day and age, most people have read), he talked about reducing friction to learn new habits. Then I thought to myself, what about introducing friction to get rid of habits?

That's exactly what I did. I created the highest amount of friction for platforms like Instagram and TikTok. I deleted them from my phone, but I made sure that I still used them to stay connected to my friends. So I started accessing these platforms on the browser. If there's one thing about social media, it's that they're not well optimized for the mobile web.

Using it is frustrating because the experience is buggy, slow, and not as feature-rich as the native phone app. Tadaaa! Friction! That's exactly what I was looking for.

Now, when my friends would say, "Did you see the post I sent you on Instagram?" I'd open the browser, type in Instagram, see it, respond to it, and close the tab. That's it. You may think, "Shreyash, what if I just closed the app after using it?" No. It's well-optimized, and you'll go back to it later. How many times do you go back to your previously opened tabs on your phone browser? Exactly.

In short:

Delete all the social media that distract you from work.

If staying connected with your friends and family is essential, then log into those on your phone browser.

This simple way of creating high friction in my workflow has saved me hours and hours of productive time.