How To Be More Intentional on Social Media
A three-step checklist for healthier, less time consuming social media use.
On the evening of my last payday, I was desperately browsing the internet for something to buy. Something, anything, that I might like enough to buy, to treat myself for a month’s worth of hard work. And to my dismay, I couldn’t come up with anything!
The longer I spent fruitlessly scrolling, the more I could feel a bizzare anger creeping up on me. These gigantic, ultra-wealthy companies, who make a business out of trying to sell me things every second of every day, can’t help me find anything to buy? I was flabbergasted. We all concede unfathomable volumes of our personal data for the hungry, number churning algorithm to learn from. It knows everything there is to know, from what computer model we use to where we go to work and how long we spend at the grocery shop.
How is it possible that, for once, I want to be told what to do with my money and not one of the data-mining services I use can sell me a damn thing?
After an embarrassingly long time, I shut my laptop and went to bed, shopping cart empty and bank account still holding my full paycheck. Before I fell asleep, I couldn’t help but think: is this the new normal? Is it now normal to be told what I want, and is it…
