I have repeatedly considered a social media purge for a couple of years now, but sadly enough, I’ve taken none. In fact, my screen time keeps increasing dramatically; I refuse to believe that the cumulative amount of time spent on this damned thing is nearly 8 HOURS a day!
A study in 2018 by Neilson shows that social media activity has risen up by a whooping 9 hours within the past 4 years, as American adults spend more than 11h of their waking hours scrolling through social media. Social media marketing is progressing in a timely fashion–over 800 million users worldwide use Instagram each month!
Evidently, I have a problem, and so do many of you.
Instead of passing time, if we could take those 11 hours and use them to our advantage, wouldn’t that serve us some gratification knowing that we’ve held time by the gut and condemned it from passing us by?
Shouldn’t there be a rehabilitation center for social media addiction? We’re acting like it’s disgraceful not to take time for ourselves and focus on our cognitive and behavioral growth; there’s that unlawful social pressure that forces us to check what everyone and their mother post.
Does it really matter though?
We’ve already been conditioned to the neediness of social media. Simply put, we think we can’t live without it.
Tristan Harris, the co-founder of the Center of Humane Technology and co-founder of Time Well Spent movement, has compared social media platforms to slot machines: “You just pull a lever, and sometimes you get a reward, and sometimes you don’t; the more random it is, the more addictive it becomes, and that turns our phones into a slot machine”.
As marketers learn the persuasive techniques that we feed off of when we’re vulnerable, they succeed at manipulating our minds and resulting in the accumulation of 8-11 hours on social media.
If businesses are thriving on building an infinite ladder of persuasion, chances are, humans are immensely losing a valuable amount of autonomy. Where does that leave us? Do we have a voice; the ability to pick ourselves up before we’re swamped in this chaotic orchestra?
That’s why social media purge is crucial. It doesn’t matter how we do it, we just have to get it done.
Planning is knowing the benefits of the final outcome. It’s a form of habit switching that will most probably take time and effort to get used to, and that’s absolutely normal!
I’ve been going above and beyond to skewing a few habits of mine even if it means to halt what once brought me happiness for the sake of a robust quality of life.
Just because something brings you satisfaction, doesn’t mean it’s good for you.
Our social media purge should begin like this:
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