Ready Settings Go! Prioritizing Your Social Media Settings

With today’s advanced technology, we can all agree that time has become our most precious commodity. Quality time spent with family and friends, enjoying the outdoors and creating real-life memories are all vastly more important than an endless flow of information, much of which is not relevant to our daily lives. By prioritizing your social media settings, you can control when and how you get information, rather than constantly being bombarded on our electronic devices.

Many of us have become tired of endless "pings" and pop-ups on our phones or laptops and the constant influx of emails from Facebook and Twitter that clutter our inbox. When we originally created our social media profiles we often don’t change the default notification settings, unaware that these settings keep us checking our phones more often than necessary. They are easy to change and manage.

All social media platforms have a settings area or widget icon where you can turn notifications on and off. The widget looks just like it sounds - a tool icon. You can easily review your settings and deselect all unnecessary boxes. There’s a good chance you have unknowingly opted to receive an email each time someone comments, likes or shares one of your posts.

Smartphones are easy and convenient to use but there are a few hidden features that you may not be aware of. From your smartphone when you pull up your Facebook profile, you'll see under your name some icons. One of those icons says ‘More’. When you click that icon you can change your profile picture, your cover photo and you can view your Privacy Shortcuts, Click on Privacy Shortcuts and scroll down and you'll see a tab called Privacy Basics, Check it out, there's even an area that lets you manage the ads you're shown so they are more useful to you.

Twitter also has a widget that allows you to mute people individually. One option is to go to the Twitter user who you don’t want to receive notifications from. Click on the three vertical dots beside the ‘following’ icon and click on ‘mute’. You can also accomplish this in the newsfeed by clicking on the down arrow icon at the top right of the user’s tweet.

We're too busy in our daily lives to be distracted with constant interruptions. Who cares what Mary had for lunch? Resist the impulse to actually reply to that statement on Mary’s Facebook status and simply snooze Mary for 30 days. On every Facebook post, you will see in the top right corner of it, 3 tiny little dots. Click those dots and you’ll find the snooze option. You’ll also see an ‘unfollow’ option but don’t confuse that with ‘unfriend’. Unfollowing means you will remain friends with them and you will never see anything they post unless you go directly to their Facebook page. That feature comes in handy with your friends who rant about politics too often!