Social Media can be a great tool. But it can also be the worst one. The aspect I like the most is the fact that it depends on how you use it.
Did you know that every day there are more than 500 million new tweets? Or that more than 1.3 millions pieces of content are shared on Facebook every minute? Or that 5 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every second? Finding new content and things to spend time on the internet is not a problem. Or is it?
Everyday, people use several Social Media platforms to catch up on subjects they are interested and stay up to date with their friends lives. The problem comes when we use this platforms in an abusive form, choosing wrong content or wasting time on what will not add any value to our lives.
How many people do you follow in each platform? How many of them are really relevant or related to your interests? The Internet is polluted with bullshit, and that’s something we need to learn how to handle.
2 years ago, on a daily basis, I would catch up on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, in addition to a few car and tech websites. In all my accounts, I would follow at least a 100 people, which made me spend more than 30 minutes on average on each of these platforms. The results? More than 2 hours a day in which 75% was poor content. This means 1.5 hours a day I wasted on scrolling stuff I could not care less about. Add to this Youtube sessions, the time spent texting, uploading (and editing) content and different games installed in my mobile phone. My productivity levels were in all-time low, and the need to receive Social Media approval was becoming and addiction.
How did I change that?
For starters, you need to realise which need each platform fulfils and take advantage of it:
Snapchat
From my personal point of view, this is my least favorite and I have a hard time enjoying its use because of how limited the quality of content. In my case, I directly stopped using it.
Twitter
This is a great source of information, and sometimes you can find great discussion threads going on. News, articles and company communications are easily found here, so I still keep it around for a few tens of accounts. I personally do not follow friends in here, I just enter and check the few accounts I’m really interested on and move to the next task.
Facebook
Hands down my favorite one, but as well the hardest one to control. In here I follow the magazines and news sites I’m very interested on, in addition to a few experts. To avoid long sessions, I read the beginning of the articles and save them for later. Once I have a good gap of time, I catch up with the information I’ve gathered.
Regarding friends, Facebook is the best way to have access to their info and to message them, but it doesn’t always mean they will be generating good content. I discovered the wonders of the “unfollow” to avoid wasting my time in posts I don’t care about like football, the Kardashians or food pictures (there are great food accounts out there). Don’t get me wrong, whenever I want to check up on a friend, I can get updates in their timelines or do this action called.. uhmm.. uhhh.. how was it? I had a phone icon… hmmm.. oh, yes! I call them.
Mobile Games
This was literally (haha) a game-changer (so funny). I changed my game (haha, I did it again!) structure into two parts: great games for real gaming like Vain Glory or Asphalt 8, and GAMEE for casual and competitive gaming with my friends, substituting all the ones I had. In the first group, I get to play for 30–40 minutes straight for my own joy and they really are great options. For the second group, I substituted all my casual games for just this app. If I feel like playing games, this is what I do.
How does GAMEE work? It’s a social gaming platform full of games - something like Instagram for games. The main two advantages are: over 50 different games in one app to play with friends, and it’s completely free without annoying adds of freemium systems.
Youtube
Stop the auto-play. Stop the endless chain of nonsense videos. Stop it. Now. I mean it. Stop.
Instagram
Again, not within my favorite ones but I can’t deny it has a very attractive point: you cannot beat the visuals and fast scrolling it allows (plus, 80% of the cute kitty and puppy videos are there). In this part, again, I insist in sticking to the purpose. Having something new in the feed is not going to help you being productive, and you will be seeing a lot of fake beauty with strange angles, many good-looking meals and tons of advertising. If you are interested in art, design, cars, fitness, travel and a few more categories go ahead, but spoiler alert: you will get a lot of crap on the way.
As a summary, Social Media is a very powerful tool for both getting great content and wasting your time. Make sure you are using each platform for what they are meant for. Follow the right people, accounts and channels and make the most out of your time. If you wanna just let your time go by, there are tons of websites for that :).
-- I previously posted this article in my Medium profile, here's the link https://medium.com/@jaimepichardogarcia/the-social-media-double-edge-c90913bedda5 --