Myth: "Quitting social media is easy because we all know it's harmful."

There are countless articles, studies, and even documentaries highlighting the negative impacts of excessive social media use. We've reached a point where it's almost cliché to criticize social media's effects on mental health and real-world relationships. However, despite this widespread understanding, usage continues to skyrocket. So why is it so difficult to disconnect, and what's the answer to how to quit social media for good?

The Oxytocin Trap: How Social Media Hijacks Our Brain's Friendship Mechanism

Here's the fascinating paradox: our addiction to social media stems is driven by the brain's attempt to satisfy the need for connection.

Arthur Brooks, a Harvard professor and happiness researcher, describes how social media sabotages your brain’s friendship mechanism. Our brains produce oxytocin – the "friendship hormone" – from two things:

1. Eye contact
2. Physical touch

Oxytocin is critical for building and maintaining real connections. However, social media tricks our brains with the idea of an oxytocin rush, without actually fulfilling it.

Every notification, like, or comment gives us a cheap imitation of the oxytocin we might feel from actual interactions. Our neurochemistry is starved for real connections. And so we keep scrolling. The end result is that we end up feeling even more isolated and depleted.

Cultivate Intentional Connection

The key to truly breaking free from the trap and learning how to quit social media is to become truly intentional about connecting with others. This idea is at the core of tools like Soonly. These tools create dedicated moments for genuine connection with people you love.

How to Quit Social Media: A Step-by-Step Guide

Here's exactly how you can become more intentional about your connections.

1. Notice when you turn to social media for oxytocin. As Arthur Brooks says, "You don't need six hours on Instagram" to figure out where your friends are going to be.
2. Swap social media for real connections. Once you notice you're caught in the trap, commit to a simple interrupt: check in with someone you love. It might be a quick message, it could be sharing something silly, it could be a quick phone call (it doesn't matter if they can't pick up).
3. Make your connections intentional. Real connections don't happen on a whim, they happen when you make them happen. Soonly makes this easy by building connection points into your life at regular intervals.
4. Create rituals of connection. This could be regular times that you talk to friends and family, it might be boardgames on Tuesday. Make this a non-negotiable part of your routine.
5. Practice reducing usage gradually. Learning how to quit social media doesn't happen overnight, you might start by setting specific times to use social media and gradually reduce them over time.

Some quick tips to make this easier:

• Be intentional about the technology you use. Social media is about trapping you in a cycle of fake connections in order to monetize your attention. Instead, focus on using technology that drives real connections.
• Focus on quality over quantity. This is a key point in learning how to quit social media - fewer, more meaningful interactions are far more fulfilling than shallow engagements.
• Share authentically. Real friendships and relationships are all about genuine conversations. You don't need to just share your highlight reel.

When you reshape how you approach using social media, you're not just transcending the attention trap, you're creating a rich social life. Your goal is to enhance real relationships, not substitute them. By focusing on intentional connections, you reinforce these these relationships with the oxytocin that comes from real connections. Quitting social media is like emerging from a dimly lit cave, you step into a world of real relationships and wonder how you ever got trapped in the first place.