Social Media turns us into Idiots!
We have eight social media accounts on average, most of us use some sort of messenger app, we laugh at videos of babies enjoying their first slice of lemon on YouTube and we browse through photos of delicious-looking food creations, inspirational quotes and selfies on Instagram. In short, this is us: generations Y and Z, always online and ready to share our lives with the rest of the world.
But I constantly find myself wondering: who cares about our Starbucks cups, our newly manicured nails and our workout selfies? Why do we want to see @justinbieber’s I-love-you-face, @KimKardashian’s naked bum or cross-eyed @MileyCyrus? Why are we not satisfied with watching one clip of new-born, big-eyed, fluffy mammals? All that, however, is not even what’s nagging me the most. Although smartphones make our lives easier in many ways, are we not wasting too much time on stalking people we never really liked and on meaningless posts of stars we don’t even care about?
When I was trying to answer these questions, I came across the 2016 GlobalWebIndex Report on the Latest Trend in Social Networking. The report states that we spend two hours a day on social networks and messaging. We dedicate approximately one half of our online time to messaging (e.g. WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) and the other half to social networking, watching TV, listening to the radio and reading online publications. By the way, this time does not include the time we spend online for work and study purposes.
I find this quite shocking. I mean, I don’t want to demonise reading, watching or listening to the news or staying in contact with family and friends. But according to the report, we spend only about twenty minutes a day finding out what’s happening in the world. Another twenty minutes, we waste on social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest. Perhaps twenty minutes does not sound that much at first sight. But it adds up to nearly two and a half hours per week, ten hours a month and nearly five days a year.
We waste five days every year on social media! And that’s not even five days of 365 days. We need to remember that we are asleep about a third of the year anyways. And if we count in eight hours a day, five days a week for working and studying (which might not even be enough), we are left with only 170 days a year that we are not sleeping, working or studying. If we take away another hour of showering, brushing our teeth, getting dressed and sitting on the loo and another hour for cooking and eating per day, this leaves us with 142 days. There are far more factors to be considered, but I think, this number is quite illustrative and probably more or less appropriate for most of us. Commuting or time spent on hobbies vary too much from person to person, which is why I won’t take it into account here. In the first diagram, however, these activities are considered in ‘the rest of our free time’.
So, we have 142 days a year that we are not sleeping, working, studying, eating or on the loo. And we decide to waste five full days on social networks and fourteen days on messaging. Every year! If we count in the rest of our online activities, this adds up to 28 days that we stare on our screens. That’s about twenty percent of our free time we rather spend on the internet than in real life.
I mean, I don’t want to be naïve. We all want to stay in contact with friends and family and we all want to stay tuned about what’s happening in the world. We don’t want to stare holes in the air when we are queuing for a train ticket or sitting on the loo. We are all amused by Donald’s brain farts on Twitter or by revelations about what noises foxes make. And I want to make clear that I don’t believe that all of those 28 days spent online are a waste of time, but I honestly think it’s too much! I think it’s important that we are all aware of how much time we spend with our smartphones every day and we should try to reduce this shocking number of 28 days a year to a minimum. Even if that means to sometimes ignore the newest updates on Kim Kardashian’s naked posterior or someone else’s fancy thirst quencher. Generations Y and Z, we can be more than a bunch of passive social media zombies!
With thanks to Jennifer A.
