How I Finally Broke My Social Media Addiction Using James Clear’s Habit Inversion Theory
It’s not magic, but it’s pretty darn close to it.
Like any addiction, it has taken me a few tries to break my unhealthy social media habit.
My first attempts were just short breaks — 15 to 30-day rehab stints, if you will.
In 2020, I spent the summer away from social media (it was a very good time to do that), and I felt amazing! It was incredible! But then, as soon as I let myself back on, my daily usage kept climbing and climbing.
And it kept climbing until its tentacles had wrapped me up in that familiar state of a vague sense of anxiety.
On February 23, 2024, I was finally fed up. Enough was enough. I had to quit right on the spot.
When I shared this decision with my friends, they were surprised. They never saw me posting on Instagram or Facebook, my two main drugs. But I was lurking, and the lurking had become insidious.
I listened to the professionals along with my intuition. I was and remain confident in my readiness, intentions, and desire to quit for good.
How did I go about this?
By leveraging some powerful tools.
The Habit Loop
The idea of the habit loop was not a James Clear discovery, though he did popularize it. Charles Duhigg, in his book “The Power of Habit,” might be the first user-friendly version of this story. But James cleared it up for us:
As seen, a habit has four parts:
Cue
Craving
Response
Reward
When developing a habit, James says there are four questions to ask:
How do I make it obvious? (Cue)
How do I make it easy? (Craving)
How do I make it attractive? (Response)
How do I make it satisfying? (Reward)
The cue is what triggers the habit. Let’s use an easy example:
I wake up (cue)
I need a boost (craving)
I drink coffee (response)
I feel better (reward)
And the fifth thing that happens is association. You begin to associate coffee with waking up and getting that boost which makes you repeat the loop.
For me, my social media habits looked something like this:
I’m feeling anxious (cue)
I need to calm down (craving)
I look at my phone for reassurance (response)
I stay stuck in my phone for way longer (not a reward)
I don’t actually feel any better (still not a reward)
I need to look through my phone more to find the answers (definitely not a reward)
I spiral out of control (absolutely not a reward)
I can’t tell you what the reward is (maybe awareness is the reward?)
All habits serve a purpose. The problem with my habit was I couldn’t find any perceivable benefit in it as I just found myself lost in the onslaught of photos and videos of people I didn’t know telling me things I didn’t care about. It wasn’t making me feel any better. It was making me feel worse. The posture I took while using it, the strain on my eyes, the lack of energy involved. It wasn’t pretty.
Plus I started buying stuff on Instagram that I would never have bought elsewhere.
It was just a bad scene, and I wanted to quit before I made it worse.
Inverting the Question
We always hear about good habits and how important it is to develop them — and it is. But what about bad habits? How do we curb habits that are holding us back?
By asking the opposite question.
“How do I make this easy?” becomes “How do I make this hard?”
“How do I make this attractive?” is now “How do I make this unattractive?”
“How do I make this obvious?” turns into “How do I make this invisible?”
“How do I make this satisfying?” is now “How do I make this unsatisfying?”
How I Broke My Addiction
I took James’s advice to heart and to the extreme.
First, I took a look at the inversion and thought through each question.
I made it hard by signing out of all social media apps on all of my devices. Even the ones I don’t personally fall prey to (TikTok and Twitter).
I made it unattractive by putting $500 on the line.
I made it invisible by deleting the apps from my phone and logging out on my laptop, desktop, and iPad.
But Amy, how did you make it unsatisfying?
Well, my dear reader, let me tell you.
Leveraging the Power of a Social Contract
This one deserves its own headline.
I made it unsatisfying by signing a contract with myself that, if breached, clearly states I have to donate $500 to Donald Trump's campaign AND, to make it even more unattractive, I have to tell everyone what I did via social media.
Giving up $500 to that notorious orange scumbag is out of the question for me. It goes against my core values as a person.
And, because of this, there is no plausible circumstance in which I would choose to log into my social media accounts and break my contract. I’m just not going to go there.
The more unsatisfying you can make something, the less likely you are to do it.
Another important item included in the contract is a list of what I can do in place of scrolling aimlessly on my phone. It includes things like reading, writing (hi!), developing skills, spending time with my instrument, and creating the life I actually want.
Sometimes it takes extreme measures to break a habit. And, as the research tells us, we can’t really break a habit. We can only replace bad habits with good habits.
Never underestimate the power of a social contract.
Developing habits is what we do. If we didn’t have habits, we’d never get anything done. We’d be too busy figuring out how to and when to brush our teeth if it weren’t ingrained in us by now.
You have the power to change your habits. Including — and most importantly — the habits that aren’t serving you.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” — Lao Tzu
So pay attention to what you’re doing.
Think about what’s holding you back.
Invert the questions.
Then go on the attack.