How Social Media Kills Your Motivation
by Amanda Johnson, Employee Motivation Consultant for ClickHelp.com — professional technical writing tool
When I watched ‘Ready Player One’, I thought ‘Wow, how soon will we live in virtual reality?’ And know what? We already live in such a world. Look around, what is real now? All of our friends, dears, colleagues live staring at their computer or smartphone screens. We already can choose our personality — just create an account with the desired appearance and skills, or play a video game. You may think, what’s wrong with it? Well, nothing, but it’s wrong with people’s attitude to these innovations. Social media was created to help people be in touch with those who lived far away to meet personally. Nowadays, Facebook, Instagram and other social media is something useless and even toxic. Sometimes, we don’t even realize it. Take a look at this checklist:
- You constantly open Facebook (even during your family dinner) to check out new posts
- You need to upload photos of your happy life events to Instagram
- You wake up at the night to check out new likes
- You are constantly waiting for new likes and shares of your posts
- You want to impress people
- You scroll your newsfeed mindlessly
- You constantly check out particular Instagram accounts
- You compare yourself to other people
Is something familiar to you? If yes, I have bad news for you — you’re social networking addicted.
Why are we addicted to social media?
It’s not because you’re weak-willed to break your social networking addiction, it’s because you feel lonely. Watch this video by Kurzgesagt-In a Nutshell about addiction. It tells about the experiment — rats who were alone in the cage took drugs more frequently than those who lived in the “Rat Park” with other rats.
So, you’re not social media addicted, you are just a human who naturally needs the society and intercommunication but all people are now on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
How can you improve the situation if everyone lives in virtual reality? All those pieces of advice like ‘set the timer’, ‘delete your account’ are useless. You will feel that you are missing something interesting while playing with your children.
As it was said in the video by Kurzgesagt, addiction is a symptom of the crisis of disconnection.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety; the opposite of addiction is connection.
~Kurzgesagt — In a Nutshell
So, to spend more time in the real life, you just need to connect with other people:
- Have a dinner with your dears every evening.
- Communicate with your coworkers.
- Play with your children instead watching TV together.
- You can even communicate with strangers in malls, underground, in cafes during lunch breaks.
Look around, people are everywhere, so, use every opportunity to find a companion.
Do you think you’re addicted to social media? Do you try to change something? What helped you spend less time on social media?
