In a series of six posts, I explain how to free ourselves from social media addiction using teachings from early Buddhist scriptures, particularly the Vitakkasanthana Sutta, which outlines five strategies to overcome compelling thoughts and urges.
The Buddha advises working through these tools in a specific order. If redirecting the mind to the positive doesn’t work, then we focus on the drawbacks of addiction. If that doesn’t work, we move to the next tool, which involves simply “ignoring and forgetting” our obsessions, the focus of today’s discussion.
The discourse provides short advice on this tool: ignore and forget bad, unskillful thoughts related to desire, hate, and delusion.
Reducing temptation is key, and we’ll explore this in two areas: external activities and internal experiences.
For external activities, here’s practical advice for managing your attention:
Consider a weight loss example in which avoiding exposure to potato chips in your house results in less temptation. The same principle applies to online addictions. Try moving social media apps to less accessible screens on your phone and turning off notifications to reduce temptation. Another good practice is to charge your phone away from your bedside to avoid immediate access when waking up. Using an alarm clock instead of your phone can help you not to engage with social media first thing in the morning.
Creating phone-free times, like during meals with family or friends, can also help. On meditation retreats, handing over or switching off your phone can make it easier to stay offline and be more present.
Internally, there are deeper practices to help avoid getting caught up in thoughts about our addictions. One approach is to broaden your visual focus. Instead of focusing narrowly on one point, relax the muscles around your eyes and become aware of your entire visual field. This wide-angle vision can help create a broader field of internal attention as well. This way, when thoughts arise, they don’t dominate your attention, making it easier to let them pass without acting on them.
In meditation, a soft, open gaze helps maintain awareness of many sensations in the body, including the breathing. When thoughts arise, they are just small parts of a vast field of attention and are easier to let pass without becoming a distraction.
This approach is similar to “urge surfing,” where you observe urges build up and pass away like waves, without acting on them. This practice helps you resist the urge to check social media and stay focused on your activities.
To summarize, to reduce social media distractions, we can:
1. Create physical barriers to reduce temptation.
2. Develop an open, expansive focus that helps thoughts pass without engaging with them.
These strategies can help us let go of addictive patterns of thought and behavior.