Social Media: The "Vampire" Of Our Time

Man looking at his phone

Being a college student and having very little knowledge as to how I need to efficiently use my time , I have had to learn about time management by going to a training. There were a lot of things I heard that were taking up people's time (such as watching TV or playing video games and a few other unproductive activities) but no other thing was as much of an issue as social media. It's easy to allow social media to suck up all our precious time and for most, it can become an addiction. When I am on social media, especially Snapchat, it becomes easy to get carried away in what I am doing and before I know it, I have spent way too much time on it and have gotten nothing done that I needed to.

We forget so easily that social media is not a NECESSITY, but a LUXURY and a privilege that should not be abused. Sure we might think otherwise but we have been conditioned to think we need it and can't go without it, but you would be surprised how long you can go without it when you reprioritize. I was told awhile back that what you focus on will thrive and what you neglect will die. This really hit me and empowered me to become more critical about what I think about. Whatever we focus on is what we are going to want to do all the time because it's all we think about.

The key to avoiding burning all of your time on social media is by setting a set time to look at it and when that time is up, go back to focusing on what is needed to be done. This has been a helpful strategy for me knowing that I don't pace my social media intake very well. Sometimes it might get to the point where we don't even follow our own scheduled time slots for going on social media and that's where accountability can come into play. Having someone where you can be held accountable and hold them accountable as well can be helpful in preventing this. If none of that works, then the next phase is to just delete the app and stay off of it for awhile till you can control how long you go on it or just know the weakness and avoid it all together.

As I stated in my last post, it's easy to get caught up with getting likes or getting more friends and followers and lose sight of what it truly is all about. Even when we do post to inform people on the latest that has occurred in our lives, it still becomes a game of comparison and jealousy. I have to wonder what all of that does for us. Why do we turn it into a game of popularity and why does it matter so much to us? What is the purpose of all of that if at the end of the day, it amounts to feeling the same way you did before you got all those likes or comments?

Snapchat is one of the most popular social media apps around and as I said before, it sucks so much time out of my day using it. All Snapchat is to me is one giant competition. The more "snaps" you take (including on your story), the higher your overall score is going to get. I have seen people spam other people with snaps just to increase their score. The worst part might be "streaks". This is how many consecutive days two people have sent snaps between each other and it doesn't stop till someone forgets to send a snap for the day (after that it restarts). Friends and family flip out when their streak is ended and they claim they "worked so hard for it" when in reality, it took a few simple clicks to get it all done. The reason I mention this is because this app is what I see a majority of people on, it drains so much time in our day that we could use for other conducive things (exactly why I used vampire for the title). To me, it's probably the most useless social media we have. While it has the potential to be used like FaceBook and Instagram, it hardly ever is. Usually someone just posts a random picture saying that they felt cute today so they thought they would post it onto their story.

I know I have been critical of social media, but like just about anything, social media can be good or it can be bad. It really depends on what we are doing with it that can make the difference. For example, one of the best uses for social media can be to expand your business. When learning how to use it for this purpose, we are using it in a productive way that can be less toxic and more beneficial to our daily lives. It gives us the exposure the business needs and if people like the work you're doing, it can grow like a wildfire. This to me is the best use of social media and it doesn't suck our time in an unproductive kind of way (just food for thought for those who do not use it for this purpose).