An alternative to social media

Take a little trip into your digital wellbeing setting and view the apps you use the most, if you are anything like the average person in 2024 then you are going to find a combination of the following apps at the top of the list; Netflix, TikTok, Youtube, Whatsapp, facebook, snapchat, Instagram and many more.

These are far from being considered productivity apps and for the most part serve just one purpose, to distract us. The amount of time we spend on these distraction apps as compared to our productivity apps isn’t to a 1:1 ratio, it's more like to a 9:1 ratio, which is alarming.

When you consider that a day has 24 hours, and we spend on average 8 hours sleeping, that leaves us with 16 hours, you can now look at how much of that you spend on social media. If you had to take a wild guess, how many hours would you say the average person spends on social media? 2 hours, 3 hours. You are far from the count, it's a staggering 10+ hours a day. That begs the question of how is it possible for a person to spend nearly all of their day on social media?

Social media should be elevated to the level of addictive drugs because at this point that's what it is already. The “how” isn’t the question at this point, but rather I’ll prefer we talk about the alternatives we have to social media. One quick point I can make is that so much distraction isn’t possibly healthy, giving so much of your attention span to something which doesn’t provide a productive value to you can only lead to your destruction. It's important to note as well that there are many persons online who are working and use social media as a tool to push forward their work, thereby making something productive out of it, but if you are just on here distracting yourself all day long then there is a problem. I don’t think any responsible parent would advise his or her kid to watch TV all day, so being a grown adult, you shouldn’t be wasting all your days distracting yourself as well.

Here are some of those alternatives we have at our disposal to replace social media in our lives.

Reading

This is definitely not for everybody, some people just don’t like reading and that's ok, I’m assuming they won’t even see this article. Reading is a healthy alternative to social media, that's because it helps stimulate your brain and builds it up positively, developing connections, feeding it with information and building links with your memories. When you read you acquire novel and unique information, and it's not just a matter of distraction but instead of active learning. There is very little you get out of a day watching Netflix movies but reading a book is sure to provide you useful insight. It doesn’t harm your eyes, it can’t overstimulate your brain, and it is definitely not addictive. The immense value reading provides is just incomparable.

Physical activities

Our bodies are meant for physical activity and definitely not to stay in one place all day. We have legs to run, hands to stress and a whole respiratory system to handle intense physical activity. There are so many things to do in the real world, social media just makes us lazy because we can lay on our beds and we don’t have to go anywhere to do things, but the real world is full of so many things, from hobbies to sports going through skills and much more.

You can focus on a specific activity in which you find your fun instead of keeping your eyes on a screen for hours. Example are; being part of a sports team, joining a choir, hanging out with a group of friends, learning a skill you can apply in the real world and much more.

The idea here isn’t that you should abandon social media totally but rather that you should make it a secondary activity and not a primary one.

Projects

The problem I have with social media is the fact that it's mainly a distraction tool, at least that's what most people use it for, to distract themselves all day, which for me is a serious problem. I don’t think anybody should be wasting away their days and life on mundane content which will be irrelevant in a matter of weeks, sure you can spend an hour or two on that but not 10+ hours. You should be focusing so much attention and energy on building something sustainable and long-lasting, working on a project, developing yourself, building a skill and much more. Take on a project which you are passionate about and focus your energy on that instead.

Productive social media

Not every social media is bad and as a matter of fact every social media can be used in a productive one. For the simple fact that there is such a diversity of persons on social media, you can find about everything. On there you can build a community of persons with shared interests, develop your brand or promote a business, learn new skills or build connections with valuable persons, you can learn from CEOs and so much more, but you choose to watch funny videos all day long. Social media like LinkedIn are so powerful in terms of building useful connections with persons across the board, you have a sneak peek in their lives, and you can follow their whole career, even TikTok does have useful videos, but you must have a clear idea in mind of what you are trying to accomplish.

Building Skills

What can you say you are good at? Do you have a unique skill nobody else has? I think there is a lot of happiness which can be gotten from having a mastery of a skill, and that can be achieved only through years of training. Commit to building a certain skill through the years and become so good at it that everybody can recognize that, your name could even be associated to that skill. Whole communities are sometimes associated to a specific type of business or skill set.

Amish Community, United States: Known for their woodworking and craftsmanship.

Bali, Indonesia: Famous for their traditional woodcarving and sculpture.

Japan: Famous for their precision manufacturing and technological innovation, particularly in electronics and automotive industries.

Switzerland: Recognized globally for their precision and craftsmanship in watchmaking.

etc

What are you known for? what specific skill set do you have and can be recognized for?

Conclusion

Despite being useful, social media is an innovation with a lot of dark sides which go against our human nature and puts into us some habits which are unnatural. It has become more addictive over the years because companies are aggressively trying to maximize profits and their business models rely on our attention spans. Its up to us to combat this addiction and focus on making something productive out of our lives.

Thanks for reading ☺️

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