My Nickel’s Worth

Social media has become a place where people discuss anything in their lives---your family, friends, jobs, politics and so on. But in all of it, social media actually makes you less social. For the generations that are 30-50, Facebook is where individuals will spend their time discussing the things in their lives, and it would amaze you to see how much time people are actually spending on Facebook per day. For the younger generations, you can find Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat to be where the bulk of social media conversation takes place— and the same remains true for this age group as well.

We can become so caught up in the latest meme and the latest video that we’ll lose sight and time of everyday face to face interaction with others. If we just took a step back and removed ourselves from social media by 50 percent of what we are used to, I think you would be amazed at how much of a positive influence it could make in your life. I know that throughout this pandemic it is made things much more difficult for in person activity, but even being able to have a conversation with other people while wearing a mask is more healthy than spending most of our time on Facebook and Twitter. It is fascinating to me that something known as “Social media” can actually make us less social.

I encourage you all to spend less time on social media this next week. Stay off your phones when you are in the living room with your families, put your phone away while eating dinner and just enjoy the company of one another socially rather than using social media to completely fill that empty void for you. You would be amazed at how much this can affect your everyday life in a positive way.