Locked In: How Social Media Affects Your Productivity

With their endless topics to scroll through, eye-catching thumbnails to click on, and millions of short-form videos to watch, social media apps are designed to capture your attention and keep it.

A lot of what makes social media apps easy to get attached to involves how they're designed to manipulate human psychology.

  • The apps take advantage of our natural curiosity to keep us scrolling through our feed for hours.
  • Apps also take advantage of our desire for social inclusion and fear of missing out on events our friends are involved in. The desire to maintain social connections and stay in the loop about potentially important events are things these apps feed off of, encouraging us to check our feeds just to see what people are up to, even in inconvenient moments.
  • Social media utilizes intermittent reinforcement to keep people online. When someone receives a like, comment, or other message, they receive a dose of dopamine and experience pleasure. There's no guarantee of getting these notifications, which subconsciously trains people to keep checking an app constantly in the hopes of another dose.

No two apps were built the same. Each social media service has its own unique design features that make them easy to get hooked on.

  • TikTok: This app primarily contains videos that are a minute long or less and are made to play on repeat, which may encourage users to watch several in a row or play one on repeat multiple times over. It also features an infinitely-scrolling setup, a design choice that can exacerbate procrastination as someone sifts through the massive library for new content to watch.
  • Instagram: Being an app focused on visual content, Instagram encourages its patrons and advertisers to post visually appealing photos to catch viewers' attention and provide an instant appeal to their emotions. The Explore page loads dozens of of these aesthetically-pleasing images at once in an infinitely-refreshable grid, keeping users stuck in a scrolling cycle for a long time.
  • YouTube: This video-sharing platform's most addicting feature is its front page, which gives users a large lineup of recommended videos based on their watch history, likes, and other interactions with content. Given that long-form YouTube videos tend to range from TV show episode length to Netflix documentary length, and that the website has also incorporated TikTok-style shorts in recent years, people can lose a lot of precious time on the website looking through their library.

Excessive social media use can negatively affect how your brain functions in a number of ways.

  • Frequent notification pop-ups drag your focus away from important activities.
  • Regaining focus after scrolling through a social feed takes a long time, up to 23 minutes. This can make it difficult to get going on the tasks you need to finish for your job or school.
  • The constant stream of text, images, and other media can lead to information overload. This state of overwhelm can be disruptive when you're trying to finish a task that requires deep concentration.
  • Social media has been linked with shortened attention span.

Poor mental performance as a result of social media abuse can negatively impact productivity, which comes with its own consequences.

  • Struggling to keep up with your assignments at school can deal a significant blow to your academic performance and grade point average, which will hinder your ability to complete your degree.
  • Lowered performance at work can put your job at risk, possibly cutting you off from an important source of income.

Below is a list of apps that can aid your productivity instead of hindering it.

These are just a few apps that can aid you at school or in the workplace:

  • Instant messaging apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams can help you manage tasks and deadlines, let you stay in contact with project partners, and encourages you to ask your professor or higher-ups questions if you're stuck.
  • Google Workspace apps can be helpful to have on your devices, because they encourage a balance between social activity and productivity with their various functionalities. For example, Google Documents allows teammates to work on an important document together through sharing, and Google Chat can be integrated with other programs in the same workspace, giving teammates a means to keep an open line of communication and help each other stay on task while working on a project.
  • If you don't want to do a full detox, some apps can help manage the time you spend on social media per day instead. For instance, Forest sets up a productivity timer screen with a sapling, which requires you not to touch any other app in order to grow into a full tree. Another app called SPACE gives you reports on your total screen time and how much time you spend on specific apps, and can also let you set up times of the day for it to block push notifications from other apps.

These are helpful, but checking new messages and posts is still tempting. How do you take your focus back and get to work on the things you need to do?

Here are some tips on how to limit social media time so it won't take up valuable time or brain-space you need for your projects.

  • Switch off push notifications to keep them from distracting you. A continuous barrage of pop-ups telling you something new is on an app is very disruptive, so putting your phone in do-not-disturb or switching off notifications for specific apps can help you focus.
  • Out of sight, out of mind. When you need to work on something, set the phone in a drawer or in a separate room so you won't feel the urge to check your socials.
  • Take social media apps off your device's home screen. Select the "remove from home" option on your device or tuck the apps away in their own folder, so they don't become disruptive when you're trying to focus on an important task.
  • Take a break to refresh your brain. You can pick specific days of the week or times of the day to set your phone down, so you can focus on activities that don't involve apps or the internet. This will give you a chance to clear your mind and recharge, explore your interests, and spend time with people you care about in real life.

Site by Jazzmyne Haines

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All images are from Adobe Stock, provided by Adobe Express. Some images are generated with Firefly.