I hear ya. I started out 2016 by deactivating my Facebook account, culling my Twitter following to 12 and my Feedly subscriptions to 10. I also added Disqus to my hosts file to make news sites less enraging.
I've taken other measures in the past. Someone else in this thread mentioned unfollowing everyone on Facebook, that helped quite a bit. But there's a lot to be said for declaring social media bankruptcy and being freed from that involuntary compulsion to open up a new Chrome tab and waste time.
> Someone else in this thread mentioned unfollowing everyone on Facebook, that helped quite a bit. But there's a lot to be said for declaring social media bankruptcy and being freed from that involuntary compulsion to open up a new Chrome tab and waste time.
I did this recently (unfollowing (almost) everyone on my FB friend list), and it has resulted in me spending less than 10 minutes a week on the site. I didn't do it so I would use FB less, I did it because my feed was full of nothing but hatred and negativity, and to see that from friends and family is extremely depressing. If I didn't use FB to promote a couple of projects I'm running, I'd drop it altogether and rely on my wife to keep me updated on family and mutual friends who choose to only have contact with the outside world via the FB window.
I also unfollowed nearly everyone for similar reasons. The unintended side-effect is that it's much less interesting now and as a result I spend less time on Facebook. Success!
I've taken other measures in the past. Someone else in this thread mentioned unfollowing everyone on Facebook, that helped quite a bit. But there's a lot to be said for declaring social media bankruptcy and being freed from that involuntary compulsion to open up a new Chrome tab and waste time.