I think all of us can admit that using social media can be quite addicting sometimes. When something good happens, when something bad happens, when you hear your favorite song, see a good movie, read a good news article, got a new job, lose an old job, get a significant other or lose that significant other, we run to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc. to share our news. And because something like this (or something less significant) happens to us everyday, we spend a significant amount of our lives changing statuses and tweeting and messaging. Furthermore, because this happens to our friends hundreds of times a day, we spend an even larger time checking their statuses and tweets and messages.
Before we know it, we have spent hours on Facebook and Twitter, not doing homework, laundry, grocery shopping, calling family members, reading, cooking, exercising or anything that we should have. For most of us, it is not necessarily our intent to waste our entire lives on these social networking sites. Most of the time, it starts as a very innocent break in between assignments or a way to relax after a long day or an honest attempt to get in touch with a friend and before we know it, it's half past 1am and you are writing a blog post for Advanced Computer Applications that you probably should have done hours ago.
The
article we were assigned to read for our computer apps class gave some very helpful tips on how to kick the habit of obsessive use of social networking. I thought all of them were very helpful. They definitely take practice and a lot of commitment, but they are definitely manageable. To put the main idea of the article plainly:
prioritize your time and do other things with your life.
I can personally say that whether for business or entertainment, I spend an excruciating amount of time on social networking sites. This enables procrastination, doesn't help me get a lot of work done and is distracting at times. The article mentioned above has very helpful suggestions on how to kick the habit of habitual social networking, but I was also interested in the forced restraints that were suggested at the bottom of
this article we read in class the other day, such as programs you can install on your computer that blocks whatever sites you want for a pre-determined amount of time, which you cannot take back once its activated. I will definitely try the more voluntary regiments first and then move to more drastic measures if these don't work.
I suggest that everyone in my same predicament try these methods (voluntarily or involuntarily) so that we can all free ourselves from this "obsession and addiction" to social media, because it wastes too much time.
