Social Media

How much time did we waste in 2020, in 2019, in 2018?

Social media has changed our world forever. In many ways it has helped us, we are able to communicate with people across the globe that we would have never been able to consistently communicate with before. It has allowed us share our opinions, photos, thoughts and more. However, with the good also comes the bad.

While some researchers claim that the rate of depression increases, heavy drinking increases and self control decreases as we increase our use of social media more other researchers have found that time spent on social media have no association with an increase risk of anxiety or depression. There are dozens of studies that claim there are negative health outcomes related to an increase in time spent on social media. However, there are also dozens that say it is not. 

Whether you want to focus on the positive or the negatives of social media there is one thing that is true that isn’t up for debate or discussion.

We spend a lot of time on social media. Over 8% of our day, a little over 2 hours a day, is spent on social media according to Statista. However, let’s assume you get 8 hours of sleep a day. That 8% of your day spend on social media is over 12% of the time you spend awake. Or over a year adds up to a total of 730 hours or roughly 1 month. If you live to the average age in the US of 78 years old and started using social media when you were 15 that puts you at 63 months spent on social media over the course of a lifetime, roughly 5 and 1/4 years.

Now this isn’t a call for you to get off social media, to delete your online presence and move into the woods to become a hermit, but rather a call for you to pay attention. I had no idea before starting to write this that on average we spend 1 month a year on social media.

Before starting to write this article my phone usage tracker was off, it is now on. I am going to monitor it and try and spend less time on my phone. Less time on social media and less time reading short form articles, more on that in a different blog. 

My reasoning for spending less time on the phone, social media, etc., is quite simple. We don’t know how much longer we are going to be here. It’s a morbid thought but it’s true. Rarely do I ever end a session of scrolling on social media and think, “Wow, that was good, I need to do that more often.” Usually it ends with me thinking, “Shit, what was I supposed to be doing again where did that 20 minutes go.” 

I don’t know about you but if I could add 5 years of something more meaningful than social media to my life I would do it, so I’m going to try.