Quit Social Media

I use social media.  A bit.  I say that because apparently the average usage is about 2hrs a day!

I use Facebook to post news of my books, poetry contests and photography.  Sometimes I use it to message people who are not on email/phone.  But I try NOT to use it too much as I don’t like being the same as 78% of the population (53 million people in UK) who do use it.  I don’t monitor how long I spend on it but I guess it varies to a few minutes here and there to half hour?  The average British user spends 110 minutes a day on social media and 43 million are on Facebook here.  And the scary bit – 87% of children (12-15) have a social media profile in the UK.

I also have a Twitter account where I share info about books, poetry etc. but I mainly use it for news.  I don’t trust the mainstream media to give me an unbiased version of what’s going on in the world so it’s one of several sources I use to get info.  I follow all manner of nutters from all over the world, far left, far right, middle of the road.  I also look at scientists and environmental organisations I have an interest in as well as many others I’ve long forgotten I was ever interested in…

I do have Instagram but rarely use it and will probably delete it soon.

Why am I telling you this?  Don’t know really.  Maybe to say that while I use it casually for news and business marketing I really don’t want to and would love to get rid of it altogether.  Why though?

Well, it’s like this.  The currency of the future will be data.  (It already is.)  And we should be selling our data to big tech for lots of money.  Yes that’s right, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta & Google should all be paying us already – and quite handsomely too.  Unfortunately most people aren’t aware of this and freely give away their most valuable possession – their data.

Every time you open an app you give away data.  Every time you click something, like it, scroll, share and so on… you are giving away data.  And Dawkins forbid you ever buy something – then you are really giving away data!

And what do you do when you are on social media?  Watch depressing footage of bombs going off?  Animal abuse videos?  The pandemic.  Depression, recession, stock market crashes, nuclear war…  It’s all doom-scrolling and cannot be good for you.

Try to remember what you used to do?  Walk, talk to friends, pick up the phone, fuss the dog, TV, read books, magazines…

The longer you spend thumbing through your social media feed the more you’ll feel overwhelmed by an endless supply of awful news stories – many of which are false / fake anyway!

So, you’re giving away a valuable commodity (your data), you’re wasting time and impacting negatively on your mental health.  So why are you still reading this?  Switch the bloody phone off until tomorrow.  And think about this.  If you can’t do that, i.e. go 24 hrs without looking at your phone, then you really do have a problem!

Good luck 🙂