BLOG #3
According to a study in 2017 on social media today, the average person spends nearly two hours (116 minutes) every day on social media. That translates to 5 years and 4 months over a lifetime! On top of that, the average person spends 7 years and 8 months of their life watching TV. In total that’s about 13 years spent looking at a screen!
Check out this study by Social Media Today:
The way our culture is evolving because of media platforms and technology, those numbers will continue to rise. The younger generation of teens is spending up to 9 hours a day on different social media platforms.
And we are victims of this excessive amounts of screen time.
I am the first to admit that I start scrolling through Instagram or YouTube and catch myself 30 minutes later hooked on watching Tasty cooking videos or NBA highlights from Derrick Rose’s MVP season.
Social media is an addiction. It consumes our days and gives us immediate gratification, while at the same time it lowers our productivity and impedes our social skills.
I can’t tell you the number of times I have walked into a room of people lounging around a TV and every one of them are on their phones.
Social media not only decreases our face-to-face communication skills and make us lazy, but it causes sleep deprivation. Every night before bed, we go on our phones and scroll through Facebook or watch Netflix on our laptops. The blue light emitted from computer, tablets, televisions, and phone screens reduce our melatonin levels. Melatonin is the hormone that helps control our sleep cycles. With low melatonin levels, it becomes harder to fall asleep at night and stay sleeping during REM cycles.
With increasing rates of social media usage, it is so important to give your brain a time to relax. Reading work emails, watching Game of Thrones, or watching Instagram stories can trick your brain into thinking it needs to stay alert and awake. Especially after spending several hours surrounded by different media, your brain needs time to unwind. Therefore it is recommended that you should refrain from all screen activity at least an hour before bedtime.
Although there are plenty of downsides to social media, there are still plenty of perks to staying connected.
1.Staying up with current events.
2. Accessibility to unlimited content.
3. Staying connected with family and friends.
4. Increasing brand awareness and boosting customer engagement.
Just like anything, social media use is great in moderation. It is important to limit your social media use so that it does not affect your productivity and even more importantly your quality of sleep.
I challenge you all to take one day off from using your phone. And see how it changes your life. What are the things you miss about it? What habits don’t you miss? How can you continue to cut back on screen time? In what ways can you use social media to your benefit?
Don’t be a mindless scroller. Use your screen time responsibly.
– Jake Beman