My Healthy Social Media Boundaries as a Work-from-Home, Stay-at-Home, Homeschooling Mom of 3 Kids
If that post title makes you think “Well she’s just busy, that’s her boundary”, then you’re only partially right.
I am not perfect with social media consumption. However, I do try my best to be a conscious consumer for a few reasons:
- As a full-time caregiving, homeschooling parent + entrepreneur, I don’t have hours in the day to waste. I need to be as efficient as possible.
- As a former neuroscience research executive, I don’t trust the devices as far as I can throw them when it comes to how they impact our brains physically + chemically.
- As a parent of 3 kids, I feel it’s my responsibility to model healthy habits for my children, so if I’m giving them screen time boundaries on the grounds of “health”, then I better be doing the same for myself.
Also, there’s nothing worse than the feeling of looking up from a doom scroll into the eyes of your kids + realizing that you’ve just wasted time with them that you’ll never get back because you were watching viral dog videos…
No judgment if that’s you right now… It happened all too much in this house until we decided to get serious about our screen time boundaries as parents, too.
Read on for some of my best advice for leveraging the social media essentials + getting rid of the rest…
No. 1 ๏ผ Eliminate watching your favorite feature altogether
Yes, I said that.
For me, it’s Instagram stories. I get lost in the doom scroll so easily when I start on one Instagram story + allow the next one to pop up automatically.
I come up for air 30-minutes later at best trying to mentally justify why I just checked out of life like that so suddenly (uhh, I was learning something interesting! I swear!) because goodness knows I certainly can’t tell you HOW I did.
And that’s exactly how the algorithms are made to work. They grab your attention faster than you know what’s happening. It’s a kidnapping of your brain.
Think about it: Most people are typically going straight to their favorite feature on their favorite social app for the majority of their scrolling time. So, when you eliminate consuming your absolute favorite social media feature altogether, you’ve reclaimed about 80% of your time back almost instantly just from not going directly to the feature that’s getting + keeping you on the app the most.
Consider: What piece of social media siphons your attention the most?
Maybe it’s not Instagram stories, but Reels. Maybe it’s TikTok.
For this first step, go big or go home: cut the exposure cold turkey. Be aggressive. You depend on it + your kids do, too.
an organic truth
Living the life that we do requires deep focus + the ruthless elimination of that which doesn’t serve us. The only way we’ve found to achieve this with consistency is by doing the hard thing no one else is willing to do.
No. 2 ๏ผ Say the purpose of your social media session out loud first
Before you access the social apps for your second-most favorite features or “for research or business purposes”, declare the purpose of your signing-in out loud.
This holds you accountable even just to yourself because you know you are who you are when no one is looking. Humans are not naturally wired to disappoint themselves, so name the promise you want to keep to yourself + see how nature can work in your favor.
If that’s not going so well, name your scroll purpose in the room with someone else nearby like a co-worker or your child. Let them hold you accountable simply by their presence. You don’t want to lie to your 1-year-old even if they can’t call you out, do you?
Say something quick + simple like:
- “I’m going onto Instagram to find 1 reels template for this new step-by-step recipe I’m recording.”
- “I’m checking this specific hashtag on TikTok to collect 3 trending ideas I want to contribute to this week.”
- “I am sourcing 10 local shops on Facebook to curate a ‘shop local’ giveaway basket.”
Be specific. Give yourself a number. Give yourself a checklist. Get on the app. Get to work. Get off the app. Bing, bang, boom.
No. 3 ๏ผ Remember the tale of the landline…
There’s a clip from comedian Iliza Shlesinger in her Netflix special Elder Millenial that lives rent-free in my brain + replays every time I plug my phone in to make it a landline.
So, here’s the clip so it can live in your mind rent-free, too:
In case you’re nap-trapped under a sleeping baby or side-hustling during your office job + can’t turn up the volume, I’ll copy the script here:
Some of you were so quiet when I said I was a millennial…. F*ck you.
I am 35, which means I was born in 1983. Which means I am right at the cut-off. So I am a millennial, but I am an ELDER.
ELDER MILLENIAL.
Wizened.
Saged.
“Yes, gather round the Snapchat children.
I’ll tell ya the tale… (whoosh, blows dust)… of the landline.”
Anyways, just trust me the clip is worth playing.
The idea here is to plug your device in + only use it from that location.
Remembering to give your phone some sort of anchor can help you keep your attention tethered to your office desk, your entryway charging station, or wherever you’re stopping by or passing through but aren’t staying when you’re not working intentionally.
If the phone or tablet or laptop can’t travel with you to the bathroom or to the bedroom, just think of all that you’ll accomplish in the wellness + relationships areas of your lifeโฆ
No. 4 ๏ผ Choose your influencers + where you see them
Just because an influencer has a presence on 10 different social media platforms doesn’t mean that you have to follow them in each space. You’re allowed to be selective. And dare I say it, you should be.
Similarly, the influencers who appealed to you 90 days ago, 6 months ago, a year ago, 5 years ago… those are not often constant. Give yourself permission to declutter your “following” list + mute posts like a mean girl. Trust me, they’re not taking it personally.
There was also a period of time (maybe it’s still happening, I’m not sure!) where I was suddenly “following” accounts that I had never intentionally chosen to follow before. It was as if Meta was doing it for me…
And that feels like a disgusting overreach in my opinion.
Almost as disgusting as when my business social media accounts got censored + buried simply for having the word “organic” in my brand name + shared the very beginning of my wellness content. (3 home births later…)
Consider who you want to give your time + attention to, then put yourself in the respectful arena that matches. Find where you most want to hang out with those people who value your presence + block or avoid the rest.
Join the Community
Enter your email below to gain free membership to our community of wellness + wealth-minded parent entrepreneurs.
An invitation for you
Meta’s censorship prompted me to open The OrganicFamilyCEO Community on Mighty Networks, so that I could invite wellness-focused parent entrepreneurs into honest conversations without them being concerned about their family’s privacy.
We just started a fresh community this month from scratch + I would be so grateful if you joined as a free member. In the upcoming months, I’ll be running free workshops for entrepreneurial family life management that you won’t want to miss.
No. 5 ๏ผ Take action while you’re educating yourself
One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in my entrepreneurship experience is waiting to justify my qualifications with education before taking imperfect action.
I have let my perfectionism + need to prove myself on paper first sabotage opportunities before they’ve even gotten off the ground ๏ผ for years.
The reality is that we live in a world with constant information consumption. The landscape is constantly changing thanks to technology. By the time you’re “well-educated” in one area, the information or presentation has shifted + offers something new.
an organic truth
You’re never going to be “caught up.” You’re never going to be “the most qualified” to everyone. Education is forever ongoing + available. And that’s a great thing when we don’t make it come ahead of our starting line.
So, the remedy? Take the imperfect action as part of your assignment. Learn from the DOING. Take a scientist’s approach of having a hypothesis + then testing it, tweaking it, etc. Learning a few core principles as you go, but never not experimenting.
When you can overcome the need to be qualified according to some made-up standard + show up every day (flaws + all) with a willingness to learn + you share that on your platform, that’s when you build the community that trusts you.
Because you’re doing the work. You’re being honest. You’re sharing the EXPERIENCE of being a real human being in a world of robots + fact-checkers.
That will ALWAYS override the algorithm you’re studying.
Commit to not using social media unless youโre earning the privilege of it by posting there, too.
Youโre not a taker. Youโre a giver. GIVE content with your experience as youโre learning + watch social media start working for you, not against you.
What are your boundaries with social media these days?
Let me know what you’ve tried or are interested in trying next. And if you want to collaborate with other wellness-conscious parent entrepreneurs who are motivated to eliminate the distractions like you, join us in our free OrganicFamilyCEO Community: a social app off of Facebook/Meta with no ads + full privacy.
As always, thank you for choosing to spend some of your scrolling time with me. I promise to make your time here worthwhile.