What are you doing with your time? All of it...your free time, the majority of your time? Minutes can add up quickly and we often say we don't have enough time.
If you find yourself guilty of spending hours on social media, and it is not for the purpose of marketing yourself for a stream of income or any other value, this one's for you. Say it with me “I am addicted to social media”. You may think to yourself that you are not addicted and that I am over exaggerating, but you have to face the problem to fix the problem. I will use myself as an example of this. I can, without thinking, scroll through social media at any point of the day, for hours. I am only awake for about 16-18 hours per day, and I easily spend about four of those hours scrolling between Instagram, Facebook, and entertainment sites. Four hours is only the average. So if you figure at 7 days out of the week, 4 hours per day, I have spent 28 hours per week on social media. That is a full day that I have loss out of my week where I could have been productive elsewhere. Now I have friends who spend that amount of time on social media because they are influencers, and they bring home the money to do so. I am not that friend. I am the friend who scrolls just to get my mind off of life, to see what other people are doing/talking about, and to get a social high. That is an addiction no matter how you flip it. It is important that we as millenials make better use of our time. I am not saying that everything we do has to be related to monetary gains, I am saying be concerned with the value. Our time has value attached to it. The idle mind of the social media scroller has usually (speaking from personal experience) does not walk away with true tangible value that was worth the time spent. I will always use social media for what it is worth because a lot of good can come from making new connections, but it is about attaching WORTH to time, so ask yourself, WHAT IS MY TIME WORTH?
Put the phone down friends. Close the laptop for a few and really dig deep. What is it that you enjoyed doing before social media became as big of a topic as it is today?
Are you still doing those things? Whether it is reading, creating, contributing to self care, you have to get back into those things. Social media used incorrectly can not only be a time waster, but detrimental to the fight for mental health. I am currently following 3000+ people on Instagram. That means, after Instagram shows me what they think I would be interested in most, after 28 hours per week I have been exposed to hundreds of peoples thoughts, energies, and even deception. There are loads of content that is out there that can hurt, just as much as there is content that holds value. The job of yours is to put a value on your time, and limit social media use in order to be connected and mindful of the world outside of it.
Things to Do instead of scrolling through social media :
- Read a couple chapters of a book
- Listen to podcasts that have topics that interest you
- Create content that can be used to brand yourself
- Learn a new skill/ take an online course
- Spend time doing things that uplift you in a positive way
- Exercise! Do some yoga, kickboxing, or simply grab some a jump rope and work on your health. Health is a big part of having a strong mind.