Is Social Media Good or Is It Actually Stealing Our Lives?
How I am trying to use it, without being a slave to it
Let’s be honest about social media for a few minutes. How many of you use some form of social media? Come on now, stop burying your head in your mobile, hoping I won’t notice you. I can see you.
My admission
Ok, me first. I use Social Media. I will qualify that, I waste a helluva lot of time on social media. You know the sort of thing, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. What am I looking for, what is the reason? I know I will never get to the end, because it goes on forever!
The facts
Anyway, I just spent a good 2 minutes of in-depth research on Google to come up with the following user figures for some of the most popular platforms:
- Facebook — 2.8 billion users
- Twitter — 192 million active users daily
- Instagram — 1.074 billion users
- TikTok — 689 million users
These figures refer to 2021.
So you can see, we are not alone.
A question, how many of these users are having their lives stolen by social media? I'm afraid my in-depth research hasn’t reached that far, but my guess is it is probably a very large majority, and sadly, they don’t know it. Now don’t get me wrong, some people are very happy to do that. It is just another form of entertainment for them, so all good.
What does it mean for us, as writers?
I’m thinking, most of us writers are very busy people, maybe looking to earn on a side hustle or even a full-time income. I certainly am one of them. So why do we do it?
Good question.
I must admit, I joined a couple of those Facebook Medium writer groups in the hope of finding some good interaction with like-minded writers, maybe some good advice, or even some interesting articles to read.
However, what I found, not only, but in the main, was a lot of general complaining about the platform and its algorithm. Now sometimes a good old moan makes us feel better. However, in the time I have spent interacting on some of these threads, I could have written a whole new article.
Another thing I see is the promise of “Here is my latest. If you read and comment, I will read yours. Drop your links.” I’m not sure begging for reads is a great way to becoming a top writer, or even one that makes a few quid as a side hustle. No, time is better spent by writing and hitting that “publish” button.
Mental wellbeing
The other thing, and maybe just as importantly, is I find myself in a negative, demotivated mindset every time I have spent any amount of time on social media. Twitter is particularly bad for this, where everyone is attacking everyone else for not agreeing with them. Sensible debate seems to be an ever diminishing concept in that arena.
So, my advice is?
- Use it sparingly. It is actually a fantastic tool for keeping up with family and friends. Facetime, WhatsApp, and others are great tools for that.
- Use it rather than let it use you. What I mean by that is, use it on your own terms. If we are in business, it can be a great tool for the promotion of our business, products, services, or indeed our writing.
- Avoid spending too much time scrolling through endless posts on cat and dog videos. These can make us smile, but they are stealing your life.
- Totally avoid wasting time on negative whinging posts and most definitely avoid getting involved in exchanges underneath them. You cannot win and I can guarantee it will make you feel worse than you did before you started.
However, given all I have said, if you love to spend hours a day on Facebook, Twitter, or similar, then go for it. Don’t let anyone tell you how to live your life, especially me.
I, for one, am trying to cut the amount of time I spend on social media. How much time do you spend there?