Weekend Engagement - Social Media, A Bane Or Boon?

What do you spend far too much time doing, how does it negatively impact your life and what steps could you take to reduce it?

Two words. Social media.

Not a surprise, and I am probably not the only one.

I did a check on the numbers on my phone. My average daily screen time is close to 9 hours!!! gasps

And the "Social" category took up 36 hours, which works out to be 6 hours per day. While I don't really consider Whatsapp as "social media" because it's more for daily communication, Facebook was at 11 hours, which works out to be close to 2 hours per day. Of course, the rest presumably would be X/Twitter, Discord, Telegram, etc.

And if you think that's a lot, these numbers were just my phone usage. I spend time daily on laptop on platforms like Hive too! I interact and engage almost on a daily basis and I suppose Hive counts as social media too!

So how does it negatively affect my life?

One, tired eyes. After a long day at work, and staring at work laptops, it's another strain on the eyes to be scrolling through my phone or be typing on the laptop.

Two, lack of sleep, especially on weekdays. On weekdays, work has taken a huge part of the day, and my only free time to use these apps and write these posts on Hive would be at night. Sometimes, there's so much happening in the news (e.g. big events), and I end up staying up later than I should have.

Three, a "waste" of time. The "waste" is in inverted commas because I don't fully think that talking to people and reading current affairs is a bad thing at all. The only downside is that when so much time in a day goes into a category of activity, it tilts the balance and other aspects of life are neglected. Perhaps I would have exercised more, connected with my loved ones a little more, slept a little more - if I didn't spend so much time on social media.

Writing the last part would make me somewhat guilty. I have always told myself it's something that I need to work on, but I have always "failed". It's really hard to resist the happenings in social media and it's not easy to set a hard limit on how many hours I should be on these platforms, because it varies from time to time as well. For example, I was out late with a friend this weekend, and by the time I returned home, showered, and settled down to type this post, it's already past 2300h. I mean, I probably should get ready to sleep, but I am trying to also make it a habit to write as much as possible (daily if time permits), to hone my writing skills, to engage with people, and to build my Hive account too.

In short, there's no golden solution for me, and all I can say is, too much to do, but too little time. And it's something that I just have to manage along the way. Haha. That's why I never understand why there are people around me who could tell me "life is boring" and they "don't know what to do" outside of their work hours. For me, it's clearly the opposite. Lol!

That said, it's not that I didn't do anything well. In my recent vacations, I deliberately took a break from Hive, where I didn't post or comment, or vote posts. I think such breaks are quite useful, it's like taking a power nap, of course, I will still catch up with stuff when I am back but having a break is beneficial because it allows me to really focus on my vacations and it's one less distraction.

Ending the post with a scenic photo which I took in Osaka, Japan at one of the viewing observatories. It was a beautiful moment, watching the sun set in the distance. A reminder to myself not to forget to live in the present and snap out of social media (for a while).

After all, as some would say, we travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us.