This is a continuation of my unofficial (and unrequested) series on time management:
- Unified Theory of Time Management – Studio711.com – Ben Martens
- Social Media Pause – Studio711.com – Ben Martens
I’ve continued to think about this. It’s a bit sobering to think about how much of our time each day is spent being influenced by an algorithm. Social media is all about feeding you things that will make you swipe up one more time for as many hours as they can. The news is about tweaking your emotions in a way that you can justify as keeping yourself informed but is financial motivated to keep you watching longer. Streaming TV services are constantly monitoring what you watch and feeding you more things that will keep your eyeballs on their service so that you will keep paying the monthly fee.
If it was all altruistic, maybe it wouldn’t be as bad, but one peek behind the curtain quickly dispels that theory. At best its corporations driving their bottom line, but all three of those are also being heavily influenced by other nation states and organizations with their own motivations (none of which are healthy for you or for the country.)
All of these things are fine to consume in moderation, but I wish there was some way for everyone in America to actually have a report at the end of the week about how much time they spent on these things. Your phone will give you that report (there are apps for it if it’s not built in on your phone), but people have to enable that and then look at it. Do it for a week or two and tell me that you’re proud of the results. Over the last few years, I’ve been weaning myself off of these kinds of apps where you can never scroll to the end and while it was REALLY hard at first, now I don’t miss it and I’m certainly glad I did it. The only one I still use regularly is YouTube, but I make it a point to not scroll through any recommendations and only watch the latest videos from what I’m subscribed to. Once you start ripping it out of your life, you start to realize how many other places it tries to creep in. It’s a constant battle.
I think in 20-30 years, we will look back at this time and think about it like I think about smoking. When I was growing up, smoking was everywhere, but now we realize how terrible it is for your health. This one is going to be even harder to measure though because while there are certainly health aspects, I think the mental, social, and spiritual effects are even worse. Is this overreacting? Maybe. But am I going to regret doing something valuable with my time instead of scrolling? Never.