Managing time on my devices has long been something I've been interested in and have written about many times in the past. Good time management in general is an interest of mine and managing how much time I spend on my phone is all a part of it. It really goes back to getting enough sleep and being in a good enough head space to make good decisions. It's days I haven't slept well and I'm frustrated about something that has nothing to do with my phone, that I end up wasting time on devices to avoid dealing with the real problems. (Like our pointless snow day a couple weeks ago where I still had a kid awake at 6:30am and didn't get to shower until 10am.)
So a long time ago I decided that part of managing my time well and managing my social media time well would be to not check any social media on the weekends. At first this was really hard. I haven't had the Facebook app on my phone in years, same for Twitter but I spent a good 6 months deleting the Instagram app from my phone every Friday to reinstall it on Monday. I got very familiar with my password then! But it worked, it was enough to break the habit and keep me from any sudden checks.
Now I am mostly able to keep off social media without deleting apps. I find it SO freeing to not feel like I have to work time into our weekends to check Instagram and see what people are up to. That frees up about 20 minutes in my day but the real freedom comes from not even thinking about checking it. It's mostly subconscious but I don't have to see when I'll get child-free time in order to spend time staring at my phone. I just don't, on the weekends.
I generally post to Instagram 3-4 times a week and just knowing I'm not going to be over the weekends really helps. Taking two days off every week keeps me from getting too sucked into the app and feeling like I constantly need to share what we are doing. I never get in too set of a habit around my time there because I never have a streak of days checking it! It is the best mental break. I also don't check Facebook or Twitter on my computer but since I try not to turn on my computer either over the weekends (besides working on specific projects during Sam's naps, like finishing up photobooks or planning a vacation), those aren't too hard to avoid.
This is also made easier when we are at the lake in the summers, where we usually have bad reception. For a long time we were sharing 3 gigs of data between myself, Matt, my sister, and her husband. We were almost always short on data and so that meant very little phone time at the lake since we don't have wi-fi there (I wish we could get Netflix but otherwise I am perfectly fine with no wi-fi at the lake!). It just felt like taking something off my plate to mostly be off my phone while at the lake. Even if I wasn't going to spend that much time anyways, knowing I couldn't without risking overage fees really made the decision easier to put the phone down. And then once I started this no weekend thing, being in the habit of being off my phone on lake weekends really helped.
Besides my two days off every week, I also generally stay off social media when we are on family vacations - both our lake vacation and our regular vacation. Those are important family times and I love getting a lot of reading done or watching some House Hunters (which we mostly only watch on vacations and sometimes it's the only thing we watch besides movies brought from home) with Matt. It's really freeing to not feel tied down to my phone, even though I know I'm the one doing the tying down the rest of the time. Just knowing I'm not giving myself the option of checking social media helps me stay more relaxed and more involved with the important people right in front of me.
We don't go completely screen free on the weekends. We often do family movie nights on Fridays, except that lately Luke has been requesting some classic Lego Star Wars video game playing with Matt and I instead of a movie (Matt and I played that game SO MUCH the first fall we were married.) Matt and I aim to watch a movie together on Saturday nights and catch up on a tv show (lately it's Brooklyn Nine-Nine) on Sunday nights. I have my computer on for the aforementioned projects on Saturday naptimes and Luke cashes in the screen time he's earned for solo video games during Sam's naps on both days. Plus, I don't think I ever go a whole day without texting anyone, except maybe on vacation, so we're definitely not locking our phones away on the weekends.
It's has given me back time, it's given me back mental space (my most valued space!), it keeps me more focused on the people right in front of me. Taking a weekly break has proven to be a good balance for me between being on social media and not being consumed by it. I'm very glad I worked the break into my weekly habit!
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