Skip to main content

On Social Media and Alternatives

 

What I’m thinking

A former Prime Minister recently banned under-16s from using social media sites. This measure, which will supposedly take effect by spring next year, was deemed necessary to protect kids online. 

Now, the jury’s out on whether this is necessary or extreme. It’s generated such a buzz around the world, that even in my neck of the woods it’s being asked if minors should be banned from social media. I’m not here to discuss this, not exactly, especially when the world of under-16s is so foreign to me, me that was born an adult. It did get me thinking: could adults stay off social media? Could you? 

Not permanently, although if you could, hey, power to you. Just, enough to regain a semblance of control of your screentime. I’ve woken up on a Monday morning and been brashly informed by my phone’s Digital Wellbeing app that the previous week, I had a daily screentime of [redacted to safeguard my self-esteem]. Like that wasn’t mad enough, most of it was spent on Youtube and the Gram. Ei. 

Photo credit: Redbubble

So I did the wise thing. I stayed off those. Perhaps that’s a mild embellishment of the truth. I seriously limited my time on those apps. I was successful. For about three days. And then I decided the success deserved a reward. The reward? Longer time spent on Youtube and Instagram. 

Sigh. 

I get that social media for some is a form of escapism. A break from work. But, truth be told, most of us use it when we want to shut down our brains, consume stuff while we laze. Bite-sized videos giving us a quick dopamine hit, messing with our attention spans. Pictures and conversation threads tickling our emotions enough that we’re leaving reactions, fueling arguments, all up in the business of people we’ve never met. You’ve likely tapped open a social media app recently, from boredom, or mild curiosity, or an addiction you won’t admit, checked out a few videos, and then come away feeling worse than you did when you logged in. 

So yeah, there are benefits to staying off social media, or at the very least, limiting your time on it. A reduction of feelings of anxiety and depression, possibly because you compare yourself less to the people on screen who appear to be living your dream life. More time to do other things. Sleep better. Improve your focus. Repair your attention span. Save your data, even; those things are such a data suck! But, face it. It is incredibly difficult to say you’re going to limit your social media time and actually successfully carry out said plan for more than a few days. 

Unless you’re filling all that freed-up time with something that engages you. (I was going to put a wedding joke here, but that could ring unserious in this wholly serious post.)

  1. Read

Yeah, you already knew I was going to say this. Open a book, or an ebook, and let someone else’s words carry your imagination on an adventure. If you’re looking for good book recs you can check out this inexhaustive list I made of some of my favourite reads. 

  1. Create

Humans by nature are made to make things, and not only in the procreational sense. You’ve got talents, interests. Maybe you crochet. You make videos. You garden. You cook. You paint. Watch something come alive because you put effort into it. It’s fulfilling. It’s a good use of your time. It’s development of your skill. 

  1. Learn 

I recently saw a quote–Imma try to find who said it–which said, and I paraphrase, ‘it takes an hour a day for x number of years to master a skill.’ Have you been wanting to learn a language? Learn pottery? Guitar? If you shaved an hour off daily social media time and stayed consistent you could become a master. (And if you don’t, find the guy who said the quote and have words with him. I found him. It’s Earl Nightingale.) 

Photo credit: AZ Quotes

  1. Practice self-care

Go out for a walk. Pray. Write a journal entry. Call or visit a friend and pour out your heart and laugh and conjure backstories for people passing by. Let your mind have a moment’s rest. Do a crossword puzzle. Sit with God and plan your future. 

To borrow a popular advertising phrase, ‘And many more.’ 

All the best in your quest to safeguard your mental health!


What I’m writing

Click to read ‘Keeper of Lost Things,’ a short story I wrote. Trigger warning: Mentions grief and gun violence. Tell me what you think.  


What I’m watching

People are still kicking a ball around on green turf. This simple action has got the world in a chokehold. I am not ‘the world’, but I do occasionally glance at the screen and even more occasionally I emote. 

Mm-hm. 


What I’m hoping for

To be able to fit eight hours of sleep in three hours. 


Till we meet again, God be with you. Hasta luego!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blue Blood

Hellooo. *waves* By now you know that when I start a post like that it’s going to be neither wordy nor sensible. I should probably stop shooting myself in the foot like that. About a month ago I showed my Mom a drawing. It was a hyper-realistic work of art made (by Kelvin Okafor; check him out on Twitter if you can) that had me drop my jaws. It was amazing! I saved it, and went to my old girl to get her to appreciate it with me. She squinted at my phone and said, ‘You now you don’t draw again.’ Ah. Like, just appreciate the thing eh. In her defense, the last time I completed a  drawing   was in April. I know. My record is iiimpressive. So… I drew. Again. Yaay. I’m sorry she doesn’t have fingers. Seriously. (Took about three hours—some of whose minutes I spent running around my hall, going to the kitchen and saying out loud that I was hungry, dressing up to go and buy roasted plantain, returning home in frustration because ther...
13 comments
Read more

Raise Your Hand!

Raise your hand if 2016 has been the worst year of your life. Someone on Twitter captured it perfectly in a tweet: ‘2016 has been some like joke like play year oh.’ Perfectly . This year has been one of the most shocking, in all my life, to be mild. Swinging into 2016 I had a sort of vision, of how the year was going to go. No, I wasn’t praying that there’d be showers of gold, and unicorns, and rainbows. In 2015 some…foundations had been laid, and I figured that this year they sort of would be built upon. Things would follow a logical progression. In my subconscious I had a somewhat defined picture of how the year was going to go. But, it was like when this picture was forming, this was 2016.  Oh, you have no idea what’s coming to you! I didn’t. A lot happened this year that left me shaken, and broken, and utterly confused, and sometimes just downright mad. The jolly-yet-realistic expectations my mind had drawn up just took one look at me, gave me a ...
9 comments
Read more

10 Things the Rio Olympics Taught Me

Some of us became temporarily nocturnal this month. We wanted to see if Usain Bolt will do his treble treble. That guy is too much fun. I enjoyed his brief bromance with Andre de Grasse. How will the Olympic world recover from Bolt’s exit? Anyway, I learned a few things. A few. 10. I’m not that much into sports. So it’s been said, that I like sports, and I do well because I follow it. Well, it took seventeen days of competition to prove all of that wrong. Apparently there are tons of sporting events that I never knew of. The Olympics happen once in four years, but in those intervals there are mini-Olympics, you know, indoor championships, the Diamond League, the IAAF championships. Handball leagues. BMX. Volleyball tourneys! Listening to those commentators harp on and on about this competitor’s season’s best and personal best and who won what earlier this year made me feel so dumb. All I follow is the NBA, barely, and the WNBA is dead to me, and my football knowledge is ...
Post a Comment
Read more