Why Phone Screen Time and Social Media Affect Your Productivity?

Social networks have become an integral part of our life for a long time. I remember when Facebook first appeared, we very often heard from friends and acquaintances the phrase “Have you already registered on Facebook?” And at that moment, those who did not know about social networks were confused and the question “What is this?” Today, bewilderment arises if the interlocutor reports that he does not have an account in any of the social networks.

In fact, there is no denying the benefits of social media. Communication with friends, new acquaintances, restoration of old and long-lost connections - all this is just wonderful and really helps to feel like a part of society. And friends on social networks, even if you have never seen them live, can help you with any question. But, despite these positive qualities of social networks, they have a rather negative effect on the course of our life, especially those who have more screen time.

Currently, there is an app for everything we do. We have become totally dependent on these little icons on our mobile screens. It's hard to imagine how we listened to music before Spotify, or how we shared photos before Instagram. Technology is present in everything, all the time.

The downside is that we are so caught up in our online lives that we forget to keep in touch offline. We no longer pay attention to the world around us; we no longer talk in person.

Sitting on the social network and leafing through the news feed for hours, we do not improve ourselves. Of course, several interesting articles or thoughts may come across in the feed, but often we see funny pictures and videos that do not carry almost any semantic load. Of course, now you will say that you need to subscribe only to informative and useful pages. But tell me honestly, are most of the publics you follow really useful and give you new knowledge every day? If this is really so - well, you are great. But there are very few people like you.

The main problem of social networks is not even the uselessness of information garbage in news feeds. Spending time on a social network does not create anything. We simply absorb the information pouring into our brains and are content with it. See, the human brain works like a CPU which only processes and evaluates. No matter what has been processed, it takes the same energy as it would be consuming for a better solution to a complex query. A lot of ideas and thoughts that we initially consider ours are actually imposed on us by social networks. It should be borne in mind that almost all brands use social media to promote their products. And their advertising can be so unobtrusive that you will mistake it for interesting or funny news, and you will automatically be forced to think about any product or service. Social networks literally think for us, providing us with tons of pseudo-useful articles and interesting content. And we don't even need to strain to find any information - everything is presented to us on a platter. Even if we don't waste our efforts to find the answer to our question. After reading the information on a social network, we immediately take it at face value, without even thinking to check it for reliability. Thus, social networks not only do not expand our horizons but also force us to think already. And this is very detrimental to our productivity.

The substitution of real communication leads to the loss of a sense of reality and social communication skills. In a live conversation, you cannot put a smiley. The concepts “add to friends”, “remove from friends” create the feeling that in real life, relationships are just as easy to build, but this is not so. Add a candle of memory for the dead to the page, add a St. George ribbon, a carnation, etc. in honor of Victory Day. Instead of a real carnation for veterans, instead of actively helping charitable organizations and affected people, a person on the Internet thinks that he has done a job by adding a picture. For someone, social networks are a great chance to "kill" time, but for some, it's just wasted hours. After all, this time can be spent with much greater benefit: meeting friends, preparing a delicious meal, or engaging in self-education.

Do a little experiment: Limit your social media for a couple of weeks. Go there a couple of times a day just to check your incoming messages, and spend no more than 15 minutes at a time. And keep a small diary of your productivity, writing down everything you've done. After two weeks of the experiment, look at the resulting list of completed work and compare it with how many things you managed to get done while constantly hanging out on social networks. Trust me, you'll be amazed at how much your productivity has improved.

What do you think? Don't forget to tell us!