Everyone already knows the standard advice: “limit your screen time,” “turn off notifications,” “unfollow negative people,” “take a break.” These are all lovely suggestions, but hardly transformative.

Social media is engineered to override such well-intentioned boundaries. Limit your screen time? What if you work as a social media manager? Turn off notifications? And if those notifications are part of your job? Unfollow negative people? Most times, you don’t even have to follow them for their vileness to spill over. Take a break? And if it’s your source of income? Then what? So, if the usual advice isn’t cutting it anymore, what is one supposed to do? How do we survive it and maintain our sanity? The answer lies in embracing a thinking pattern that is unconventional.

Here are some unusual, strategies for staying sane in a digital ecosystem that profits from your insanity.

1. Don’t Detox; De-personalise

The usual recommendation is to “step away for a week.” But detoxing only resets the hunger cycle. Because in that one week, so much would have happened, and with the evidence of FOMO reminding us that we left things behind, we find ourselves playing catch-up, which in turn leads to some serious binging.

Try this instead:

Stop treating your feed as a mirror. Treat it as a billboard. A mirror may reflect you, but a billboard doesn’t define you. The less personal meaning you attach to what you see, the less power it has over your emotions. When you stop interpreting every post as commentary on your life, your brain stops reacting as though social media were a battlefield.

2. Mute 90% of People You Actually Like

This sounds outrageous, but stay with me. The problem is not only toxic content but also excessive content. Even good content can be overwhelming. Mute people you genuinely care about but don’t need to keep up with daily. You will still check up on them from time to time, but at least it’ll be on your terms. This transforms your feed from “the whole world shouting at once” into something closer to a curated library. Peace returns instantly.

3. Create a “Boredom Folder” on Your Phone

Put all your social media apps inside a folder named BORING or ROAD TO POVERTY or TIME WASTER, anything that triggers your higher self. It works because identity beats discipline. Imagine wanting to doomscroll and you’re staring at the folder you called Road to Poverty. Would you not immediately snap out of that desire and find something better to do? 

4. Ruin Your Algorithm on Purpose

Your algorithm is essentially a mirror of your impulses. To weaken its grip:

• Click random things you don’t care about.
• Search for medieval pottery.
• Like a video on mushroom farming.
• Spend 20 minutes looking up cloud formations.

Your feed will become so confused that it stops controlling you. A chaotic algorithm is a safer algorithm.

5. Designate Areas For Your Apps

Don’t use social apps everywhere; choose one specific spot: a chair, a corner, or even the edge of your bed. You can take it a step further by designating apps in different corners. When you’re cooking, Spotify. When working, LinkedIn. In need of ideas, Pinterest by the window.

What if I have a small apartment? 

Work with your furniture then. When on the bed, decide that Instagram is a no and must be used by the door. By the time you’re settled for the night and realise you need to adjust towards the door to use IG, you’ll forgo the inconvenience and go to bed. This technique is strange but remarkably effective. Limit the territory, and you calm the craving.

6. The “Two-Minute Pride Rule”

Before you post anything, ask yourself: “Will I be proud of this in two minutes?” Not in two years. Two minutes. Posts made from impulse, be it a spike of anger, insecurity, envy, or validation-hunting, lose their power when subjected to this tiny delay. The question creates a psychological breath that many social media apps are designed to steal from you.

7. Follow Your Future Self, Not Your Current Mood

Your mood will always gravitate towards distraction. But your future self, that wiser, calmer version of you, has better taste. Before following a page or creator, ask: Would the person I’m trying to become find this useful? This mental shift filters your digital diet and makes your online environment a partner to your growth, not a parasite on your attention.

8. Treat Your Attention like Money (Because It Is)

Before scrolling, ask yourself: Would I pay £10 to see what I’m about to see? If the answer is no, why offer something more valuable than money, your focus? If you were charged £10 for every content you like, share or comment, would the final grand total make you say, Yes, money well spent, or would you cringe at your outcome? This mindset re-prices your time and shatters the illusion that social media is “free.”

9. Stop Trying to Stay Updated and Start Staying Aligned

People scroll endlessly seeking updates: on trends, on news, on other people’s lives, on gossip, on opinions. But staying “updated” is an impossible, draining task. Staying aligned? With your values, goals, identity, and purpose, now that’s worth your time. This is a better way to refocus your mindset. It’s not updates you need, it’s value alignment on that course you want to take, that tutorial that will make your art better, that recommendation for the next book to read, that review for a movie that will expand your reasoning and vocabulary. Every time you open an app, ask: Is this aligning me or fragmenting me?

10. Curate Your Digital Silence

Silence is not the absence of noise but the presence of meaning.

Schedule deliberate “silence pockets” during your day. Five minutes where you do nothing: no scrolling, no music, no notifications. You can find these five minutes when commuting or bathing, or immediately ou come back from work. Let your brain rest and catch a break. This will help your perspective to be clear, and your social media cravings will reduce without force.

Finally,

Sanity in today’s internet is not maintained through rigidity or retreat. It is maintained through intelligent resistance. Through thinking that refuses to be predictable, trainable, or programmable. You don’t beat the system by escaping it; you beat it by refusing to let it shape the inner architecture of your life. And the moment you start using the internet consciously rather than emotionally, you become the rarest thing online today: A sane person.