TVs, laptops, smartphones, games consoles – they’re all designed for light entertainment. To add value to your life.
Then social media came along and made it even more fun. All of a sudden you could follow, share your thoughts and feelings, upload photos, and keep in contact with long distance friends and relatives.
Then the sites got cleverer, adding more and more cool stuff to do and see. Pretty soon social media had become a one-stop-shop for entertainment, social interaction, planning, dating, shopping and more!
Social media can be cool, and it can be useful. A message to a loved one or a few cat videos can be a nice addition to your day. Where we start to move into dangerous territory is when your day starts to revolve around social media, rather than the other way around. When your social life is dominated by shared posts and emojis, rather than through real conversations. When you’re more concerned about what your followers think about your most recent post than how those close to you are feeling. When every single one of your ‘quiet’ moments are spent scrolling and swiping. When you compare your life with someone else’s highlights reel.
Everything is okay in moderation but you can become terminally online. With the BBC reporting that teenagers are spending 5+ hours a day on social media, we might have reached a tipping point where social has become anti-social.
If you drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes for 5 hours a day, your physical health would nosedive. An unhealthy consumption of social media and screen time can have the same effect on your mental health.
If you’re terminally online, you might be feeling anxious, struggling to concentrate, focus or sleep. Your attention span might be shot to pieces, and your personal relationships might be suffering. If you’re consistently coming off of your smartphone feeling worse than before you picked it up, then take this as a sign to log off more often. Think about the things you’re looking at, what emotions are they stirring up in you? Ask yourself; are these emotions going to help me be a better person, a better parent, sibling or friend?
Please note, we’re not finger wagging, or lecturing. At Art of Brilliance, we LOVE social media. We endeavour to use it as a force for good but we’re seeing too many people (of all ages) seduced by the weapons of mass distraction. In the headlong rush to emigrate to the virtual world, they’ve lost the ability to flourish in the real world.
Our training and keynotes are about learning to be your best self. Upgrading to ‘best self’ involves learning new habits, but, equally, it’s about letting go of harmful ones. Hence this blog and the launch of our social media hashtag #SocialMediaAware.
Thank you for caring.