One of my many goals for 2017 was to spend less time on social media. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the selfie of friends in full length mirrors and rants/raves about politics, traffic, work, vacations, kids and everything else. My awakening moment was reading in Entrepreneur magazine that the average American adult spends two hours a day on social media. Over a lifetime, that equates to 5 years and 4 months! The average for teenagers was even more alarming at 9 hours a day. Learning of this statistic caused me to track my own social media usage behavior. I knew I had to limit social media usage. Time is our biggest constraint in life, because one day it will run out. (Sorry for the death reminder, but it is a fact.) I’m not sure about you, but I could think of better ways to spend my time.
The world of social medial can be quite interesting and have become a daily ritual for many people. I’m sure you have logged onto Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat with the mindset of, “I’ll only be on for 5 minutes”. That quick 5 minute check, then turns into an hour or more. I always thought social media was a time killer, but never actually kept track of it. I’m an accountant, entrepreneur, investor, full-time mother or three, wife, yada, yada, yada. Wasting an hour on social media can easily throw off my entire day. Besides, I wanted to set the best example for my three daughters. My oldest was heading into the land of preteen-dom and I didn’t want her to become a social media addicted teenage statistic.
My plan was to limit how much time I spent on all social media platforms, regardless if my purpose was business or personal. Here were my 2 basic rules:
- Only check social media for 15 minutes a day
- Do not check social media in the presence of my husband or kids
This may seem like no big deal to some of you, but for me this was a real struggle. The first few weeks I averaged 30-35 minutes a day. Then to kick my challenge in high gear, I stopped cold turkey. I went two weeks with no social media. During that time, I was super productive with my home and business daily goals. I was even being more creative with how I spent my time. Instead of checking Facebook while waiting for the school bus, I spent that time chatting about the school day, reading short books and singing silly songs. To my surprise, my family noticed and followed my lead and:
- Days would go by when my husband spent little to no time on social media in my presence,
- My then 4 and 5 year old were not asking to go on mommy’s phone as much and
- My husband even found time to do some of the things after work that he sometimes didn’t have time to do.
Fast forward to now, and being conscious of my social media usage has been embedded in me. I’ve expanded my time to 30 minutes a day but, honestly most days I barely log on and have to remind myself that I need to check social media more for business purposes. Social media is a part of our culture and is here to stay but being conscious and in control of how much time you devote to it is the key to successful media usage.