In our private lives, most of us live a lot in the Digital World – maybe it’s dealing with emails, streaming TV, catching up on social media, watching a movie or YouTube video, communicating with friends and family and for home admin etc.

There is a lot of good content on the Internet, but there is also a huge amount of digital pollution – consider spam messages, scams, pointless emails, pointless websites, celebrity trivia, fake news, fake reviews, meaningless social media etc.

This all clogs up our email systems, social media feeds and the Internet generally and wastes so much of our precious time.

It will also have an effect on us, it’s becoming harder to tell the fake news from the facts, harder to spot the fake reviews, the phishing emails and more. We have to put in more effort and be more vigilant against the tidal wave of digital pollution clogging up our lives.

But, you don’t have to let it take-over your life. The suggestions below can help you to unclog that digital world.

• Email
• Clean your inbox and unsubscribe from polluting newsletters that you don’t read.
• Only cc and bcc people when really necessary.
• Send lighter emails – you can use services such as WeTransfer if you need to send large files to someone.
• Set your email system to only check for new emails every hour or two rather than every 5 minutes as used by many.
• Social Media
• Turn off notifications. You don’t need to know the second someone gives you a Facebook like.
• Restrict your access to social media to specific short periods each day.
• Only post useful content and only read useful content, not the blathering of the stupid.
• Don’t chase likes or Friends – it is empty and leads to people posting endless rubbish.
• The social media companies don’t pay you so don’t keep creating content and viewing content on their behalf. (some people do earn money from YouTube etc. of course).
• Don’t bother following or reading about celebrities – they know as little as most people and have nothing to offer worthwhile.
• Mobile Phones
• Turn off sound notifications – you don’t need to know the second a message arrives.
• At night, put the phone on charge in a different room to where you sleep and turn it off.
• Don’t use ring tones that may annoy others, especially if you’re travelling by trains and buses.

Take back control of your digital life – don’t let it control you.

Do let us know by email, how you unclog your digital life.