The 1 Social Media Platform Everybody Should Have (Most Haven’t Even Heard of It):
Admit it: you spend more time on social media than you’d like to.
It’s OK—nobody’s going to judge you. All of us are guilty of wasting time on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. We’re all well aware of it—we know exactly what we’re doing when we continue to scroll, and choose to do it anyway.
At the end of the day, it’s an easy way to pass time.
Maybe you woke up a few minutes before you planned to get out of bed, so instead of getting up, you check Twitter to see what you missed overnight. Or maybe you worked on a big project all morning, and during your lunch break, decide to scroll on Facebook.
Harmless right?
This is the part where I’m supposed to say, “WRONG! IT’S DETRIMENTAL TO YOUR PRODUCTIVITY AND OVERALL PERSONAL GROWTH—HOW COULD YOU!?”
Well, not necessarily.
Yes—the majority of social media is bad for you. The ‘big ones’ mentioned above are prime examples. Those types of social platforms are meant for short-lived, passive entertainment—effortless for your brain to process. They live to help pass the time while you wait in line for coffee or when you can’t fall asleep at night.
We can scroll for hours on Instagram’s explore page or Twitter moments, log off, and not remember a thing. We don’t leave those platforms feeling better about ourselves. In fact, they usually makes us feel worse.
But one social media platform is a bit different.
It’s called Quora.
I first made a profile on Quora in 2015, but essentially forgot about it until about a year-and-a-half ago, when I started writing on a regular basis.
You might have heard of it before, or maybe the name at least sounds familiar.
That’s because if you Google any question, it has likely been asked (and answered) on Quora already. After all, that’s its primary function.
Quora is essentially a question-and-answer website.
You sign up by creating a free profile, and following topics that you either a.) want to know more about, or b.) know enough about, and want to share what you know. The option to ‘Ask a Question’ takes the place of a status update, and the closest thing to ‘posting’ you do, is answering a question asked in the Quora-sphere.
You can ask anything you want, or answer anything you want.
Here’s why it matters.
Quora is one of the only social platforms conducive to learning.
Every time I log on, I learn something new.
Sometimes I learn things that aren’t really important to my life at the moment, but that I find fascinating—like reading about weird hybrids in the animal kingdom. Other times, I learn things that are really important to my life, like how to achieve complete financial freedom by age 25.
Point being—I never log off of Quora feeling deflated, lethargic, or behind-the-eight-ball like I do when logging off of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or something of the like.
Why?
Because Quora is just as entertaining as those other social platforms, but instead of passive information—like a new Kermit meme—the content on Quora is informative and educational.
After all, it sort of has to be.
No one is going to take precious time out of their day to answer a question on Quora, just to give a half-ass response. Quorans, for the most part, answer questions honestly, to the best of their knowledge, and speak from personal experience to provide context as often as possible on every single question they answer.
And the best part? It isn’t a competition.
The Quora community is essentially one massive conversation, about every topic under the sun (and beyond), among people from all over the world.
Make yourself a Quora profile.
It’s as easy as setting up any other social platform, and it’s free.
Next time you have the urge to log onto Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—whichever it may be—log onto Quora instead.
If you’re going to waste your time scrolling on social media, why not ‘waste’ it by learning something new?
