On Spending Less Time on SM

What is the first thing you do when you wake up? I confess that my instinct tells me to grab my cellphone, check the time and (you bet it right) also my notifications on social media. How much likes did I get from my recent posts? Did my crush replied to our chat conversation already? How about posting a funny or inspiring quote for my status? <#goodmorning> I kept scrolling and swiping until I get tired of seeing the same pictures yesterday. I checked the clock and its past an hour already. Goodness! I haven't even brushed my teeth yet. Yikes!

Yup by SM I refer to social media. Some might argue that time spent on social media is not wasted. After all, this brings us joy and comfort before and after work. There is nothing bad with this really except when this becomes a routine and takes significant time of your life. Think about it, a regular person sleeps roughly 8 hours and this contitutes 1/3 of his life already. If you add 1 hour on social media, then you've got less than 2/3 of your life to do more significant and productive things.

Labeling whether a task done during free time as productive or not is a matter of personal judgement. But really, it boils down to maximizing the opportunities you can gain from using your free time. For me, I consider a task productive if I learn something new or useful out of spare time. This can be in the form of knowing a nontrivial fact and learning a new skill such as programming or playing the guitar. From this perspective, it is easy to appreciate why these activities add to my overall well-being. However, sharing tweets and forwarding posts about trendy not to mention non-sensible thoughts that do nothing but stir up drama and raise someone else's eyebrow is something I never ought to do. People have different intentions but if you carefully think about it, jumping into the bandwagon doesn't necessarily uplifts your well-being. In fact, it may even result to the opposite such as unwanted commotions and heated arguments that are staple of modern social media especially in the Philippine setting. Trolls and pun images and claims offer only a segway that more often than not exacerbate the problem.

As an experiment to see the atmosphere in certain local social media, I joined large groups where people argue about things like which love team is better: couple A or couple B. Believe me, the atmosphere was traumatic. How come these people have all the time in the world to go extra mile to justify why one is better than the other? It is depressing to witness such a dismal state. But we can do something to turn this into an advantage. A similar 'pun and troll images' approach has been used to change the statusquo. Heneral Luna images with caption, as you might have seen, has been attacking negativities yet instilling values and sense in its message. People's awareness is consequently influenced such that they devote time on discussing topics relevant to national welfare over other less important things.

As a challenge, filter out which things you repost or forward on your wall. Or perhaps better, devote less time on social media during your free time. Now, I will get out of bed, brush my teeth, and have breakfast, because soon I will be programming like a badass. An hour can really make a big difference.

#facebook #productivetask #socialmedia