Tweeting. Pinning. Facebooking. Instagramming. Tumbling. Blogging. Stumbling. Googling. Linking. YouTubing.

Oy. It can be all so overwhelming if you don’t keep your social media life in check.

I’ve been given plenty of time to reflect and in recent weeks, I’ve had several conversations with some of my close friends. In addition to their own online lives, they were each telling me the stress their teen kids feel throughout social media. But even as adults, we agreed that it’s all become a bit out of control lately; the over-sharing, over-updating, the over-everything.

My kids are too young to for all of this, but I know they’ll experience it soon enough. And honestly, it scares me to death. The reality is, since I am an adult I can rip through all of the online transparency pretty easily. I can differentiate who is sharing the truth and who is trying to create some sort of online personae, desperately trying to generate a life that truly doesn’t exist. But the sad part is, my kids will be growing up with social media and won’t have the ability to differentiate what’s “real” and what’s not because of their age and lack of life experience…

Maybe because I work in social media for a living I’ve become an “expert” at weeding through the useless updates and online jargon to get to the good stuff – the real stuff. Or maybe because I am surrounded by it all the time, I can easily separate myself from the social media madness; I know how and when to distance myself to live a full life offline.

Upon my recent Summer Sabbatical, it was the very first time in four years that I did not post to this blog or anywhere in social media for several weeks.

And the result?

It was the best thing I ever did.

Have you felt that your own personal social media feed is a bit out of control lately, or maybe you are catching yourself becoming a Facebook/Instagram junkie? Well, you don’t need to take drastic measures as I did with a sabbatical for a quick fix, but what you can do is start with a Facebook detox – you know, lose some of that extra baggage from your online social life.

Need a Facebook detox? Here’s my easy plan:

• If your feed is filled with toxic and overly dramatic updates, you don’t need those extra additives and drama in your life. Remove all excess garbage.
• If your feed constantly contains superficial updates, delete any and all processed junk.
• Don’t become an addict by updating every second of your life trying to feed your soul but only for a second for a handful of immediate likes. Feed your soul by having genuine relationships with people who are in your life – offline.
• Spend time on Facebook when you have a free moment, but do NOT let it consume your life. Workout other areas of your life and actually LIVE. Don’t live to post about it.
• Just like opening a bag of chips, you can’t have just one. When you login to Facebook, it’s no different – you can’t just read one update. Strike a healthy balance, one that you can live with.
• And just be real. Nobody ever wants to maintain a life filled with all of that processed crap.

And if you need an Instagram diet, all of the above can be applied to Instagram as well. So just read and repeat for a full Instagram detox.

Need a full digital detox?

Then take a social media sabbatical or simply unplug – and recharge your own batteries.

***Much more to come about my sabbatical. Stay tuned to follow my journey, I have SO much to share!!***