Achi news desk-
i they generally don’t believe in life hacks. While I’d love to imagine that one easy tweak could resurface my life like it’s a cracked tennis court, time and experience have shown me that positive change usually comes slowly and incrementally.
But there is one hack I totally believe in. It’s fast and free, and it will instantly change your life for the better: just mute people who annoy you on social media.
The process is different for each platform – typically, you go to the offending poster’s profile page or one of their posts and tap “mute”, “snooze” or “unfollow” – but there you go ! This digital dust-up leaves your social media spiky and flaky, or at least less squishy than before. They’re gone from your timeline, and so are the minor ailments that came with them. And, unlike unfollowing or blocking someone, the muted party has no idea they’ve been muted, so you don’t risk any awkwardness or drama.
I have a handful of quiet people. A couple of them are people I don’t want to follow. There are others that I have followed, but I have also muted them because someone else might repost them and stare at my new timeline. One is a semi-famous person who was rude to me many years ago about something at work; another was rude to my friend. There is also an ex and someone who is constantly humbled in a way that makes me want to hit my head against something hard.
These individuals brought out the worst in me. When I saw their posts, I felt angry, small and petty. I was wondering how much it might cost to buy billboard signs along major highways printed with bullet points stating how, in fact, they are terrible.
Fortunately, I almost never think about these individuals anymore because I’ve silenced them across all platforms. Unless someone brings them up in conversation, I usually forget these people exist. They have been weeded from the fertile garden of my brain.
But don’t take my word for it.
“Quieting accounts that repeatedly upset you sets digital boundaries to create a healthier digital environment,” says Bailey Parnell, founder and president of the Center for Digital Wellness. It allows you to avoid distressing content without severing ties, he says—a solution for those confusing situations where you care about a relationship with someone, despite their troublesome online presence.
“This can preserve your mental well-being while maintaining social or professional networks,” he says.
This might seem like obvious advice. However, it can be difficult to follow. The irritation we feel when we see someone’s bad posts can bring a satisfying rush: check them out! Being tired!
“There can be a dopamine kick that comes on the back end of big emotions,” says Monica Amorosi, a licensed trauma therapist in New York City. We may come to crave the adrenaline rush that accompanies content that makes us feel shock, rage or disgust.
“If we have ordinary lives, if we’re understimulated, if we’re bored or overwhelmed, then consuming this material can become a form of entertainment or distraction,” says Amorosi.
Amorosi emphasizes that it is important not to create a “space of ignorance” on our streams by avoiding different points of view or troubling news about current events. But this does not mean that social media should only be a place to access disturbing information. Our feeds can be used “for healthy, positive education, connecting with like-minded people, seeing nuance and diversity in the world, checking facts, learning new hobbies or ideas”, he said.
As such, it may be most effective to muting against those who annoy you in a blunt, reckless way – a pompous colleague, for example. Not seeing a humble bragger pretending to be embarrassed about another professional success isn’t going to limit my world view. Instead, I recoup five to 10 minutes I might have wasted taking a picture of their post and complaining to my friends about it.
In all honesty, I haven’t done anything with the time I’ve gained from not silencing the people I’ve silenced. But how nice it is to have days that are at least five minutes more pleasant.
So, shut up freely and often. And if you don’t agree with me? Just shut me up. I’ll never know!
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