Three Easy, Unconventional, Tech-Based Mental Health Hacks

The self-care industry has been booming for years, and tech-based solutions have been booming too. There are hundreds of helpful (and also “helpful”) apps out there to help you meditate, manage your time, reroute negative thoughts, track your habits, and so much more.

But it can be hard to find an app that you can and do use consistently—especially if you’re on a budget, since most of the good ones cost money, sometimes charging you every month. It’s easy to make an excited commitment and then let things lapse in less than two weeks.

Sometimes you need something simpler. Sometimes you need something that’s just set-it-and-forget-it.

And sometimes you need a way to actually cut down on your social media time, because I don’t know about you, but I’ve never successfully used a social media timer/blocker in my life.

Tech affects our mental health in a thousand ways, often with drastic impacts.

Here’s three ways to start taking your mental health back.

Download an ad-blocker

You will be amazed how much better you’ll feel when you’re not being negged by ten different multibillion-dollar industries on an hourly basis.

Also, if you don’t already have one, you will legitimately be amazed by how much less irritating the internet is to navigate without the giant walls of ads designed to be as attention-grabbing as possible.

I downloaded uBlock Origin—generally considered one of the best ad-blockers, especially since it’s open-source and free—on my current computer in November 2022. At the time I’m writing this, that was six months ago.

In that time, uBlock Origin has blocked 1.29 million ads.

In six months.

Imagine how many of those were weight-loss ads. Beauty ads, skincare ads, anti-aging ads, supplement ads, gym ads, swimsuit ads, clothing ads, makeup ads—all of these make us self-conscious and hurt our body image and mental health.

Imagine how much better your mental health would be if you saw those ads 215,000 fewer times per month.

Because that, after all, is how advertising works: these things add up.

So, download one of these ad blockers to help your brain get a break, while significantly reducing companies’ ability to track you online.

Oh, and consider downloading Firefox, because Google is protecting their own massive profits by changing their browser so that adblockers no longer work much at all in Chrome starting in 2023.

Log out of your social media apps regularly

One of the keys to breaking an old habit is introducing friction points—things that stop you, slow you down, or make the process more difficult and/or irritating.

I can say from personal experience that you will open social media on unconscious reflex much, much less if you have to stop every time to log in again. On desktop and on the app.

Studies show that many of the reasons social media has become so addictive lie in neuroscience. It takes the brain time to exercise impulse control, for example, and social media forms dopamine loops that are literally addictive. Thanks to permanent logins, infinite scrolling, algorithms, and much more, social media makes it harder and harder and harder for your brain to choose to stop.

(This is absolutely deliberate, by the way, and the man who invented infinite scrolling has said that he deeply regrets doing so because of the negative effects it has had on society, even though the invention made him millions.)

Also deliberate is the algorithms that drive social media: they deliberately promote information that you’re likely to find upsetting or infuriating—including hate, divisive political posts, and misinformation. Facebook in particular does this by looking at what kinds of posts you’ve responded to with the “angry” react, because throwing some fury in there raises “engagement” and keeps users clicking.

All that’s in addition to the fact that social media has been proven to be detrimental to people’s mental health, especially for teenage girls—and that Facebook and Instagram have known that for years, and have done nothing, even as Instagram’s own internal studies showed that their websites were worsening eating disorders and giving teenagers increased thoughts of suicide.

So! Lots of reasons to try and use social media less!

(And hey, maybe rereading some of those exposes linked above will help you maintain the willpower to get off the apps...they certainly help me sometimes.)

If logging out of your apps is too frustrating for you to maintain, try moving them off of your various home screens and into the app tray. It’ll make the process a second or two longer, which helps give your impulse control time to kick in, and you’ll usually have to pay conscious attention to find it in such a long list of apps. Reflexive app opening, officially interrupted.

And, if you’d like some proof in the pudding: I used to really struggle with the amount of time I spent on social media—and how bad that was for my mental health. Now? I don’t have an Instagram or a TikTok, quit Twitter months ago, and spend less than two hours a week on Facebook.

These strategies are a big part of how I did it.

Use a password manager

And the tech-based solutions continue! This is another one where the connection to mental health and self-care probably sounds a bit strained, but I promise it can have a real effect.

A recent study commissioned by NordPass found that the average person has roughly one hundred different online accounts with passwords. That’s a lot—and it’s increased by almost a third from before the pandemic, when the average was 70 to 80 passwords per person.

That’s way more passwords than any one person can remember, and let’s be honest, are we really all on top of good password hygiene?

How much less stressful would things be if you didn’t have to spend a bunch of time rooting around to try and dig up your old password list (or lists, if you’re like I used to be, and half of them were on post-its) every time you needed to access an account? Especially when it comes to stressful tasks like doing your taxes, paying your bills, making doctor’s appointments, or finding the Netflix password after you were automatically logged out!

Getting a password manager means that all of your passwords are stored in a secure digital vault you can access at any time. They’re safer than writing down your own passwords—and a lot safer than reusing them, which a ton of us are guilty of. They’ll auto-fill your passwords and generate new, secure, randomized passwords for you.

And on top of all the time and stress and even late fees saved because you don’t have to spend forever digging around for passwords—how much stress would you be saved from if you didn’t have to worry nearly as much about your accounts getting hacked or stolen?

Not to mention the time and stress you save by not having to deal with identity theft!

Overall, tech has introduced a lot of problems into our world, our mental health, and our lives—but if you approach it the right way, you can absolutely find ways to use tech to protect yourself instead.

Best of luck!