Social Media - part 4
I don’t come with any thoughts on how to move away from social media today - instead I’m sharing an experience and observation I’ve just had. It highlights another negative aspect of SM besides the negativity and dehumanisation I’ve mentioned in previous posts. This is about the zombie like mental state social media fosters in us.
Today as I was checking my emails I saw one from a LinkedIn connection inviting me to an event I’m not interested in. I receive emails from this person at least once a week - they are all about marketing his business. Today I decided to unfollow this person who I’ve never met and should not have accepted his connection request to begin with - another story for another time - to stop getting his unsolicited emails.
As this requires me to go to LinkedIn, I immediately got distracted by my LinkedIn feed and started scrolling and reading. In this process I clicked on a link to someone who’s work I admire, so I looked at that for a short period of time - next thing I know I’m reading my Twitter feed before finally realising I’m in the social media trap/loop of mindlessly looking at stuff - getting caught up in the experiences and opinions of strangers. I eventually became aware that I was using my most valuable and irreplaceable resource, to read stuff that has little to no consequence to my life. Arrrgghh - how many times does this happened.
This is another very good reason to avoid social media - but the trap is so easy to fall into - in this case I had good intentions, I wanted to unfollow someone to get rid of unwanted emails - but what should have been a 1 min process ended up costing me 15-20 minutes of my time on stuff that doesn’t add value to my life.
Social media is so costly! It is definitely NOT free.
Words: 325
I don’t come with any thoughts on how to move away from social media today - instead I’m sharing an experience and observation I’ve just had. It highlights another negative aspect of SM besides the negativity and dehumanisation I’ve mentioned in previous posts. This is about the zombie like mental state social media fosters in us.
Today as I was checking my emails I saw one from a LinkedIn connection inviting me to an event I’m not interested in. I receive emails from this person at least once a week - they are all about marketing his business. Today I decided to unfollow this person who I’ve never met and should not have accepted his connection request to begin with - another story for another time - to stop getting his unsolicited emails.
As this requires me to go to LinkedIn, I immediately got distracted by my LinkedIn feed and started scrolling and reading. In this process I clicked on a link to someone who’s work I admire, so I looked at that for a short period of time - next thing I know I’m reading my Twitter feed before finally realising I’m in the social media trap/loop of mindlessly looking at stuff - getting caught up in the experiences and opinions of strangers. I eventually became aware that I was using my most valuable and irreplaceable resource, to read stuff that has little to no consequence to my life. Arrrgghh - how many times does this happened.
This is another very good reason to avoid social media - but the trap is so easy to fall into - in this case I had good intentions, I wanted to unfollow someone to get rid of unwanted emails - but what should have been a 1 min process ended up costing me 15-20 minutes of my time on stuff that doesn’t add value to my life.
Social media is so costly! It is definitely NOT free.
Words: 325