So here's my big confession: I'm hacking Facebook to make it really boring, by unfollowing everything and everyone. I started a few days ago and it's working already.

Now when I mindlessly open Facebook, I mostly get the message “no posts to show” and a button to click to “find friends”. Sometimes I'll get a sponsored post or an invitation to advertise one of my posts. Whenever a new post pops up from one of my friends, I'll immediately unfollow.

My news feed is now a wasteland, and it's fabulous. It's been less than a week but I'm already going to Facebook less often and spending less time when I do.

It makes sense, because when Facebook introduced the news feed in 2006, it instantly increased what the marketers call "stickiness" or the amount of time people spend on the site. I'm reverse-engineering it to reduce the appeal.

I haven't unfriended anyone. Some time on the weekend I can make the conscious effort to think of someone and look up their profile. It'll be like Facebook way back in the old days, when you had to wander through the site like a virtual treasure hunt.

I might use the almost-obsolete telephone function on my smartphone and call up a friend I can't see in real life. Best of all, when I meet up with friends, we'll have something to talk about because we won't already know each other’s news. I know some people who don't use social media at all and that's all very well, but I don't feel that's realistic for me.

I use social media for work, and it's important for me to engage with an audience, and keep current with trends and touchstones for discussion. There's also the fact that so much of my social life is arranged through Facebook. I don't want to be that person who always needs a separate invitation because I can't be invited to the Facebook event. This way, people can still tag me and invite me to events. I can visit Facebook, rather than live there.

Interestingly, all personality types are susceptible to social media addiction. Studies suggest extroverts use social media for social enhancement, while introverts use it for social compensation. Both reasons lead to greater usage and can lead to addiction.

On the one hand, neurotics and narcissists use social media frequently, on the other hand people who score highly for “agreeableness” and conscientiousness also use it more than others.

I can ignore social media completely when I'm out of my ordinary environment, like when I’m on holidays. It's when I'm at home and going to work each day that I find the habit too strong to break.

I can only really break the habit if there's nothing to see when I'm there. I may not be a full-blown addict, but it's borderline. I don't need a professional diagnosis to tell me that my compulsion to check social media is a problem for me. So I'm trialling this method.

I might find it's too extreme and eventually settle on a middle way, but right now I'm relishing the scorched earth approach. Forget self control or going cold turkey, this is the social media equivalent of the methadone program.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons is the editor of Money and a regular columnist.