Can you imagine if all the social media outlets went down for an extended period of time? I can see people start going into withdrawal and not being able to handle the free time. They may just have to enter a rehab clinic to detox then form their own 12 step group. I really don’t need to know who had what for breakfast, what the latest recipe is, how many points they accumulated on some on-line video game and so on. I rather deal with people face to face rather than through cyber world.
This isn’t to say the computer world doesn’t have its advantages. I swear by email, one of the best forms of communications invented. The Inter-Net is a great way of gathering a lot of information in a short time period. This is fantastic for research I’m doing on a personal project, writing an article of mine or for my radio show. Other than that I just want to keep the busyness at a minimum and the clutter in my mind eliminated at some point. Sometimes I want to meditate or go outdoors to enjoy some much needed solitude.
I’ve used Facebook as a way to stay in touch with people I know but I noticed it was gobbling a lot of my time on public computers. I found that the 15 minutes I save by not using Facebook was used for other purposes. That extra time has been used to spend with puppies at the Nelson SPCA, reading non-fiction or spending time with someone or doing similar activities. Living in the moment is priceless to me.
If my Facebook account got closed down for any reasons I won’t be losing any sleep over it. It would be much like any other relationship that ends; get over it then get on with the rest of my life. No amount of reconsidering will change my mind. Like I alluded in the above paragraph, I can put my free time to other good uses.
It’s not the social media sites that are to blame for gobbling up your time, you are. You’re the one responsible for limiting your time on these websites by setting boundaries for yourself in this area. In the “old” days people used direct contact with each other whether it was by phone or in person. As valuable as computers are it’s only part of the communications grid. One finds time to do other things once they leave the social media sites alone for awhile. It doesn’t say much to me when a person spends too much time in cyber-world. It’s time to get a life and develop some hobbies.
One doesn’t need to be so vulnerable to post intimate details of their life on a social media website. It could go one of two ways. One is that no one really gives a rat’s ass; the second being is that the information could compromise a person at some point in the future, especially on the job market or another public forum.
What most people need in their life is balance, something that is seriously lacking in our world. Spending too much time doing one thing derails a life. Cutting social media to reasonable levels gives time for other activities.Oen doesn’t have to shut the world off nor share everything in their life with it either. You can be yourself, set boundaries with others, learn how to think and know when to say enough is enough.
Ron Murdock has lived and worked in Western Canada all his life, and will continue to do so until his last day on Planet Earth. He has a good number of interests and hobbies which include dogs, freight trains, baseball and astronomy. Ron wants to know what the truth is, and nothing but the truth, and will do what research it takes to find it. The best compliment he can get is when a person says his writing, or what he says, gets them seeking.
