Find out how to Break Social Media Habit (Glenn Sanford’s Plan)

The irony wasn’t misplaced on me. Right here I used to be, CEO of eXp World Holdings and writer of SUCCESS® journal—a publication devoted to serving to bold folks obtain their highest potential—and I couldn’t cease doomscrolling by my telephone at 2 a.m.

It began innocuously sufficient: a fast verify of social media between conferences, a scroll by business information throughout lunch. However over a number of days, I discovered myself diving deeper into rabbit holes of conspiracy theories, outrage content material and the form of clickbait that may hijack your mind’s reward system. 

The dopamine hits saved coming, however so did the nervousness. My sleep suffered, my focus fractured and I used to be in a continuing state of agitation—all textbook social media dependancy signs.

That’s once I knew I had an issue and, extra importantly, that it wasn’t simply private. This was a part of a worldwide disaster: Among the many billions of social media customers on-line, some estimates have indicated that as many as 210 million are battling social media dependancy. Dependence on social media can have far-reaching penalties, together with elevated isolation and loneliness; higher chance of hysteria, melancholy, and social nervousness dysfunction; sleep disruption; poor work efficiency; discount in empathy; and decreased bodily exercise, which may negatively have an effect on general well being and wellness. And, when your well being is at stake, taking a break from social media isn’t non-obligatory; it’s important.

For prime-achievers, the lure cuts even deeper. Our drive for the subsequent edge or perception is the very factor these platforms exploit. What looks like productiveness leaves us drained and unfocused. That’s why studying easy methods to break social media dependancy is so essential—particularly for leaders and entrepreneurs.

The numbers are staggering. One research reported that 56% of customers reported feeling anxious with out entry to their social media profiles. However what makes this notably harmful for leaders and entrepreneurs is the way it can masquerade as productiveness.

In 2024, the New York Metropolis Well being Division launched a report declaring social media “a risk to youth psychological well being.” The U.S. surgeon normal has referred to as for elevated transparency and for firms to prioritize consumer well-being over income.

But most enterprise leaders I do know deal with their social media habits as a crucial evil fairly than recognizing them as a real risk to their cognitive efficiency and decision-making capability.

As comic Invoice Maher put it in a quote that Cal Newport highlights in his ebook Digital Minimalism: “The tycoons of social media should cease pretending that they’re pleasant nerd gods constructing a greater world and admit they’re simply tobacco farmers in T-shirts promoting an addictive product to youngsters. As a result of, let’s face it, checking your ‘likes’ is the brand new smoking.”

The comparability to tobacco isn’t hyperbole. In response to analysis revealed in Cyberpsychology, Conduct, and Social Networking, 24% of TikTok customers and 28% of Instagram customers studied qualify as “addicted” utilizing medical diagnostic standards.

Why high-achievers are particularly liable to digital dependancy

Success-oriented people face the next distinctive vulnerabilities that make social media dependancy extra probably and extra damaging.

1. Data dependancy masquerading as analysis

We inform ourselves we’re staying knowledgeable, networking or researching our markets. However “an infinite bombardment of stories and gossip and pictures has rendered us manic data addicts,” Newport observes. “Incessant clicking and scrolling generates a background hum of hysteria.”

2. FOMO amplified by aggressive nature

Excessive-achievers are naturally aggressive. Social media exploits this by creating synthetic urgency round each replace, each pattern, each competitor’s transfer. “The urge to verify Twitter or refresh Reddit turns into a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to assist the presence crucial for an intentional life,” Newport warns.

3. Validation searching for regardless of success

Even profitable leaders crave exterior validation. “Tech firms encourage behavioral dependancy by intermittent optimistic reinforcement and the drive for social approval,” creating what Newport calls “digital slot machines” that maintain us scrolling for the subsequent hit of engagement.

4. At all times-on mentality

James Clear, creator of Atomic Habits, identifies senseless telephone scrolling as “the best interruption” to productiveness. For leaders who delight themselves on being all the time out there and all the time studying, this creates an ideal storm of distraction disguised as diligence.

The popularity part: Figuring out your digital dependancy patterns

My very own wake-up name got here once I acknowledged the bodily and psychological signs that mirrored different addictive behaviors I’d noticed in myself and others through the years. Listed below are main indicators to search for that will help you conduct your individual trustworthy evaluation.

Bodily warning indicators

• Checking your telephone inside minutes of waking up
• Feeling phantom vibrations out of your telephone
• Anxiousness when your telephone battery dies otherwise you lose sign
• Neck and shoulder ache from “tech neck”
• Sleep disruption from late-night scrolling

Cognitive warning indicators

• Issue concentrating on single duties for prolonged intervals
• Psychological fatigue regardless of not doing mentally demanding work
• Decreased consideration span for books, articles or deep conversations
• Racing ideas or feeling mentally “wired” even when drained

Emotional warning indicators

• Irritability when interrupted whereas in your telephone
• Evaluating your self to others based mostly on social media posts
• Temper swings correlated with social media engagement
• Feeling empty or unhappy after spending time on social media 

Behavioral warning indicators

• Routinely reaching to your telephone throughout any second of potential boredom
• Checking social media whereas in conversations with others
• Utilizing social media as a procrastination software
• Mendacity to your self or others about how a lot time you spend in your telephone

Recognizing the truth of our reliance on social media is a crucial first step. Most of our social media consumption is pushed by nervousness about future eventualities that will by no means materialize. The stoic strategy promoted by Ryan Vacation, creator of The Impediment Is the Method, presents a strong reframe: “Give attention to the second, not the monsters that will or will not be up forward.” 

The intervention framework: Methods over willpower

When you acknowledge the issue, the temptation is to depend on willpower to easily “use much less.” This fails as a result of dependancy rewires your mind’s reward system. As a substitute, you want systematic modifications that make the specified habits simpler and the undesired habits more durable. Clear’s Atomic Habits framework supplies the proper construction for breaking digital dependancy:

1. Make dangerous habits invisible

Take away apps from your private home display: Clear says, “If I’ve my telephone in entrance of me, I’ll verify it each three minutes simply because it’s there.” Create friction by shifting social media apps off your private home display and into folders buried deep in your telephone.

Use grayscale mode: Make your telephone much less visually interesting by switching to grayscale. The brilliant colours and crimson notification badges are designed to draw consideration and should even set off dopamine responses.

Create phone-free zones: Clear’s “one area, one use” precept means designating particular areas the place telephones should not allowed. I established my residence workplace as a phone-free zone throughout deep work periods.

2. Make dangerous habits unattractive

Perceive the true price: Analysis has proven that youngsters and adolescents utilizing social media for 3 or extra hours every day can face double the danger of melancholy and nervousness signs. The fee isn’t simply time—it’s cognitive capability, emotional regulation, and decision-making high quality.

Reframe social media firms: Newport suggests viewing social media firms as “consideration retailers” fairly than know-how innovators. “These addictive properties of recent applied sciences should not accidents, however as an alternative fastidiously engineered design options.”

3. Make dangerous habits troublesome

Delete apps solely: Throughout my restoration interval, I deleted social media apps from my telephone solely. If I needed to verify them, I had to make use of an online browser, log in manually and cope with clunky cell interfaces.

Use app timers and restrictions: Set every day cut-off dates on social media apps. Once you hit the restrict, the app turns into inaccessible for the remainder of the day.

Change your surroundings: “The essential thought right here is you need fewer steps between you and the specified habits and extra steps between you and the undesired habits,” Clear explains.

4. Make dangerous habits unsatisfying

Monitor your utilization: Use your telephone’s built-in display time monitoring to confront the truth of your utilization. Most individuals underestimate their display time by 2-3 hours per day.

Share your objectives: Public accountability will increase the social price of failure. I informed my govt staff about my digital detox, making it more durable to backslide with out shedding credibility.

Newport emphasizes that “digital minimalists see new applied sciences as instruments for use to assist issues they deeply worth—not as sources of worth themselves.” The important thing isn’t simply eradicating social media—it’s changing it with actions that present real achievement.

For data dependancy:

• Curated publication subscriptions: As a substitute of scrolling infinite feeds, subscribe to 2-3 high-quality newsletters that ship curated data weekly.
• Bodily books and magazines: Newport notes in his ebook Deep Work that “idleness isn’t just a trip, an indulgence or a vice; it’s as indispensable to the mind as vitamin D is to the physique.” Studying bodily books forces you to decelerate and suppose deeply.

For social connection:

• Voice calls over textual content: “The place we need to be cautious is when the sound of a voice or a cup of espresso with a buddy is changed with ‘likes’ on a publish,” shared Holly Shakya, Ph.D., an assistant professor of world public well being. As a substitute, schedule precise telephone calls or espresso conferences.
• In-person networking: In response to sociologist Sherry Turkle, “Face-to-face dialog is essentially the most human—and humanizing—factor we do. Absolutely current to at least one one other, we be taught to pay attention. It’s the place we develop the capability for empathy.”

For dopamine and stimulation:

• Bodily train: Common train supplies pure dopamine whereas enhancing cognitive operate and stress resilience.
• Inventive hobbies: Partaking in actions that require ability improvement (music, artwork, crafts) supplies the satisfaction of progress with out the hole rewards of social media.
• Nature publicity: Common solitude in nature helps tackle what Newport calls “solitude deprivation,” the state of spending “near zero time alone with your individual ideas.”

The stoic mindset: Staying centered in a world of distraction

Vacation’s stoic philosophy supplies essential psychological frameworks for sustaining digital wellness: “Select to not be harmed—and also you gained’t really feel harmed. Don’t really feel harmed—and also you haven’t been,” he writes in The Impediment Is the Method. This is applicable on to social media triggers. You can’t management what others publish, however you possibly can management your response to it.

“In a world of distraction, focusing is a superpower,” Vacation observes in Self-discipline Is Future. The chief who can preserve sustained consideration whereas others fragment their focus throughout a number of platforms positive factors monumental aggressive benefit.

Key stoic practices for digital wellness

Morning reflection: Begin every day with intentional planning fairly than reactive scrolling.

Night overview: Finish every day by assessing how your know-how use aligned along with your values and objectives.

Acceptance of FOMO: In response to Newport, digital minimalists “don’t settle for the concept providing some small profit is justification for permitting an attention-gobbling service into their lives and are as an alternative occupied with making use of new know-how in extremely selective and intentional ways in which yield huge wins.”

My 30-day digital detox: The system that lastly labored

Right here’s the precise system I used to interrupt free from my social media dependancy:

Week 1: Consciousness and elimination

• Used display time monitoring to determine baseline utilization
• Deleted social media apps from telephone
• Knowledgeable my staff in regards to the experiment for accountability
• Changed telephone with ebook throughout typical scrolling occasions

Week 2: Alternative habits

• Established morning routine: train, studying, planning (phone-free)
• Created night routine: reflection, gratitude, bodily ebook
• Scheduled two in-person espresso conferences to exchange on-line networking
• Began taking walks with out telephone for pondering time

Week 3: Systematic reinforcement

• Put telephone in airplane mode throughout all centered work periods
• Established “communication home windows”—particular occasions for checking messages
• Practiced being much less out there over textual content to paradoxically strengthen relationships
• Added meditation apply to enhance impulse management

Week 4: Integration and calibration

• Slowly reintroduced crucial platforms with strict cut-off dates
• Established clear standards for what constitutes “useful” on-line exercise
• Created programs for normal digital detox intervals
• Constructed assist community for ongoing accountability

The enterprise case for digital wellness: How leaders achieve an edge by disconnecting

The impression on my management and enterprise efficiency was quick and dramatic.

Improved decision-making: With out the fixed enter of competing voices and synthetic urgency, I might suppose extra strategically and make choices based mostly on knowledge and rules fairly than reactions.

Enhanced focus: Recounting the analysis of communication professor Clifford Nass, Newport notes in Deep Work, “As soon as your mind has change into accustomed to on-demand distraction, it’s exhausting to shake the dependancy even if you need to focus.” Breaking this cycle restored my capability to have interaction in what he calls “deep work.”

Higher relationships: Lowering your availability over textual content has the potential to strengthen relationships whereas concurrently leaving you (barely) much less out there to your family members.

Elevated creativity: With psychological area free of fixed data enter, I discovered myself producing extra revolutionary options to enterprise challenges.

Lowered stress: The fixed state of partial consideration created by social media use was changed by centered consideration and real relaxation intervals.

Superior methods for sustained digital wellness

When you’ve damaged the preliminary dependancy cycle, these superior methods assist preserve long-term digital wellness:

The digital sabbath

Schedule common intervals (weekly or month-to-month) of full digital disconnection. Newport recommends in Digital Minimalism to “spend a while away out of your telephone most days. This time might take many kinds, from a fast morning errand to a full night out.”

Worth-based know-how audit

Repeatedly assess your know-how use towards your core values. Newport’s framework outlined in Digital Minimalism requires that know-how ought to “serve one thing you deeply worth” and “be the easiest way to make use of know-how to serve this worth.”

Consideration coaching

Apply sustained consideration by meditation, studying or different actions that require centered focus. “The flexibility to pay attention is a ability that have to be educated,” Newport emphasizes in Deep Work.

Environmental design

As Clear writes, “You don’t rise to the extent of your objectives. You fall to the extent of your programs.” Design your surroundings to assist digital wellness fairly than counting on willpower.

When failure occurs: The restoration protocol

Digital dependancy restoration isn’t linear. “Motion and failure are two sides of the identical coin. One doesn’t come with out the opposite,” Vacation reminds us. Once you slip again into outdated patterns:

1. Acknowledge with out judgment: Discover the sample with out self-criticism.
2. Analyze the set off: What state of affairs or emotion led to the relapse?
3. Modify your system: What environmental change might stop this sooner or later?
4. Restart instantly: Don’t wait till Monday—start once more proper now.

“It’s okay to be discouraged. It’s not okay to stop,” Vacation writes. The objective isn’t perfection—it’s aware, intentional engagement with know-how.

The aggressive benefit of digital self-discipline

In a world the place, on common, folks spend over 2 hours every day on social media, the chief who reclaims this time and a spotlight positive factors an unlimited aggressive benefit.

“The flexibility to focus is changing into the scarcest commodity of the twenty first century,” Newport observes in Deep Work. Whereas others fragment their consideration throughout a number of platforms, you’ll develop what he calls “the flexibility to shortly grasp exhausting issues” and “the flexibility to provide at an elite stage, when it comes to each high quality and pace”—two of the core skills for thriving within the new economic system.

Focus isn’t nearly productiveness—it’s about presence, creativity, and the standard of your pondering.

My 7-day digital detox problem to assist reset your thoughts

Prepared to interrupt free from social media’s psychological well being stranglehold? Right here’s your day-by-day motion plan:

Day 1: Audit and consciousness

• Set up display time monitoring on all gadgets
• Doc your present utilization patterns
• Establish your prime three digital triggers (boredom, stress, FOMO)

Day 2: Atmosphere design

• Take away social media apps from telephone residence display
• Arrange phone-free zones in bed room and workspace
• Change telephone to grayscale mode

Day 3: Alternative actions

• Select two-three high-value actions to exchange social media time
• Schedule particular occasions for these actions
• Buy bodily books or supplies for brand new hobbies

Day 4: Communication boundaries

• Set up particular occasions for checking messages (e.g., 10 a.m., 2 p.m., 6 p.m.)
• Flip off all nonessential notifications
• Apply delayed response—wait not less than one hour earlier than replying to nonurgent messages

Day 5: Solitude apply

• Schedule half-hour of solitude: time by your self with out enter from outdoors sources, simply you and your ideas 
• Take a stroll with out your telephone
• Apply what Newport calls “productive meditation”—pondering by an issue whereas strolling

Day 6: Social connection improve

• Exchange two digital interactions with voice calls or in-person conferences
• Give attention to being an individual in others’ lives “who truly talks to them frequently, forming a deeper, extra nuanced relationship than any variety of exclamation factors and bitmapped emojis can present”

Day 7: Integration and planning

• Evaluation your week’s expertise
• Establish which methods had been handiest
• Plan your ongoing digital wellness apply
• Arrange accountability measures for continued success

The trail ahead: Dwelling with intention by digital minimalism

“Digital minimalism is a philosophy of know-how use by which you focus your on-line time on a small variety of fastidiously chosen and optimized actions that strongly assist belongings you deeply worth, after which fortunately miss out on every little thing else,” Newport defines.

This isn’t about changing into a digital hermit—it’s about changing into intentional along with your know-how use. “Digital minimalism definitively doesn’t reject the improvements of the web age, however as an alternative rejects the way in which so many individuals presently interact with these instruments.”

The leaders who will thrive within the coming decade gained’t be these with essentially the most followers or the quickest response occasions. They’ll be those that can suppose deeply, focus intensely and preserve real human connections whereas navigating an more and more distracted world.

Social media promised to attach us, but it surely’s been isolating us. It promised to tell us, but it surely’s been overwhelming us. It promised to entertain us, but it surely’s been exhausting us.

The time to reclaim your consideration—and your psychological well being—is now.

Your future self, your loved ones, your staff and your small business will thanks for selecting depth over shallow engagement, intention over dependancy and real human connection over digital simulation.

Probably the most profitable leaders aren’t all the time related—they’re purposefully disconnected when it issues most. In a world of infinite distraction, your centered consideration isn’t simply a bonus—it’s your superpower.

Picture by Benjamin Sow/Unsplash

Prepared to hitch the ranks of digitally disciplined leaders? Begin with Day 1 of the problem above, and uncover how reclaiming your consideration can remodel each your private well-being {and professional} efficiency. For extra methods on peak efficiency and intentional residing, subscribe to SUCCESS® journal’s publication at SUCCESS.com.