Spring Cleaning – Tips To Spring Clean Your Digital Life

Spring is officially here and therefore so is Spring Cleaning! This is the second post in my mini Spring Cleaning blog series so make sure to check out the first post here if you have not already. As mentioned in the first post, there are three blog posts in this mini-series and this post is about my tips for a social media spring clean. If you work full-time, chances are that you spend less time in your apartment and more time on your computer or your phone and therefore it is important to remember to Spring Clean in your digital life as well as in real life.

Unfollow negative or spam accounts

It is a well-known fact that social media can impact upon your mood – a 2015 survey found that Twitter was a significant contributor to stress as it increased your awareness of other people’s stress. Therefore it is important to unfollow accounts that consistently make negative posts for your own mental well-being. It also helps to clear up your feed so you are more likely to see posts from those you care about.

Unfriend negative people

Similarly to the above point, researchers found that negative Facebook posts can influence the mood of their friends’ posts, showing the impact other peoples’ posts can have on your mood. The same effect was found for positive posts but to a greater extent. Therefore it is important to also unfriend people who consistently make negative posts for your own mental well-being. Alternatively, by going to the person’s account, you can mute their posts so they no longer appear on your feed.

Unsubscribe to marketing emails

We all do it – we see a marketing email from a company enter our Inbox and we instantly delete the email without reading it. Whilst it may only take a few seconds to delete the email, this time can add up and therefore it is more time-efficient to unsubscribe from their mailing list and prevent their emails from gracing your Inbox again. All emails should have an Unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email. Alternatively, if you want to mass Unsubscribe from emailing lists or want to roll-up these marketing emails so you only receive one email a day or a week containing all these emails, you can use unroll.me.

Delete unused apps

If you are like me and have a low storage phone, you will have to do this more than once a year, but it is good practice to delete apps that you are no longer using. Not only does the free up storage for photos, but it helps to keep your phone organised and unlike donating clothes, if you change your mind, you can just re-download the app.

Protect your privacy

Quite a few apps today ask you to connect your Facebook or your Twitter account. This is okay as long as you still use the app and know what information the app and third-party companies have access to. By going into your privacy settings, you are able to either de-authorise the app’s access to your account to stop companies having access to personal data or restrict the data that they have access to.

What is your favourite app on your phone?

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