Attempting 30 days of limiting social media usage to 5 minutes
Having a look at your screen time on your phone can be eye-opening.
The sense of realization that you have spent endless hours on your phone that earned you no ounce of benefit except instant gratification resulting in overuse. The accumulation of these hours over days, weeks or even months can be embarrassing to look at.
We have developed this terrible habit of subconsciously swiping our phones to the exact location of the app without consciously being aware of it. If our eyes were closed we could still swipe and find the app due to the development of muscle memory.
Imagine we were able to divert this developing of muscle memory and trait to something that would be beneficial to us such as reading more books or exercise. The long and short-term benefits would be endless.
Some apps or features within phones provide restrictions on how much you spend on them. This is how I am to manage my social media usage.
Ideally, you would want to delete any apps that provide you with no benefits and distracts you.
However, I would not put a time limit on features such as YouTube where I would use that as a learning resource to gain information.
Ultimately the time you spend on social media can depend on what it involves such as engaging with your followers or replying to them. Then it may seem reasonable to extend social media usage to 15 or 30 minutes. However, I think that 5 minutes would be reasonable for me.
The reasons I intend to decrease my social media usage for many reasons
- We always consume information endlessly but don’t allow ourselves to digest it. Hopefully, it will allow me to be more reflective and improve my creativity.
- The addictive nature of social media, endlessly tempting you to spend more time can lead me to not reaching my full potential. Therefore I hope to see that my time opens up for me and don’t complain that there isn’t enough time in the day.
- Improving my focus and attention span. It can be easy to get distracted when trying to put your energy into an activity ultimately causing the work to suffer.
- To be more present in the moment
- Overconsumption of social media can impair social skills and I feel that is a skill I need to develop.
- Improve my quality of sleep to not waste time going on social media and not waking up to social media too.
I hope to give updates on what my experiences are when challenging myself with this restriction and hope you all try to join in this challenge with me. I do intend to share my experience after 1 month and do expect some difficulties but hopefully, I do see some short-term and long-term benefits in reducing social media usage.
I would love to hear what your thoughts are in the comments and if you are going to join me in this challenge. Don’t forget to give a clap to this article.
If you enjoyed what you read, here is some more to have a look at:
If you enjoyed and benefited from reading this, would you mind “buying me a coffee” to show your support and appreciation? I am extremely grateful for the support and hope to continue to produce more content for you all to enjoy.
