If you’re a smartphone owner, then you likely know how annoying it can be when your device starts to slow down on you.
When this starts to happen, when your device starts lagging, it can be really frustrating, and understandable, you might believe something’s wrong with it. If an iPhone or Android starts slowing down, people automatically start thinking they might need to replace it or get it fixed. However, they might not realize that checking what apps they have can be just as effective. We spoke with tech experts about three social media apps that could be slowing down your smartphone. Read more about them below.
Women Are Swapping Their Boring Water For This Ice Pop Electrolyte Mix!
1. Facebook
While Facebook is the blueprint for most social media apps, it can also be one of the most impactful apps on your phone. Although Facebook might seem simple and straightforward, there's often a lot going on in the background that can have your phone working overtime.
"Facebook consumes a lot of resources in the background by looking for updates continuously, refreshing content, and pushing notifications even when it's not in use," says tech expert Amy Mortlock with ShadowDragon. "The app collects a lot of cache data over time, sometimes reaching a gigabyte, filling your phone's memory, causing performance issues. It's heavy use of photos, reels, and advertisements needs high power to process and continuously drains your battery."
2. Instagram
Like Facebook, Instagram is one of today's most beloved social media apps. It's come a long way from its start, not just sharing pictures, but also videos, stories, livestreams, etc. Because there's so much more going on, that also means that it's holding more data, refreshing in the background, and likely slowing down your device.
"Providing you content immediately and constantly requires a lot of background processes," notes Steven Athwal, tech expert and owner of The Big Phone Store. "To provide users a seamless experience, they're continuously syncing messages, refreshing notifications, tracking your location data, and preloading content. This is consuming the phone's RAM and CPU power, causing a slowdown of your phone overall. I'd recommend going through a browser instead. It all functions the same, but without the constant background processes."
3. Gaming Apps
Sometimes, it can be super fun to play a game with friends from your smartphone, as there are many free gaming apps that give you the opportunity to play with others, making them a form of social media. However, if you have these kinds of apps downloaded to your phone, but haven't used them with your friends or contacts in a long while, it might be a good idea to delete them.
"They're constantly loading ads and pop-ups, which is consuming your phones processing power and data bandwidth," says Athwal. "They cause random lagging and freezing. Essentially, these apps are trading your phones speed for their ad revenue."
