Productivity amid distractions from social media

"The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided man".

Martin Luther King uttered these to imply the importance of lost human values during his times. I see this in another perspective; abundance of information, plethora of online platforms and myriad ways to communicate with friends, family members and even with strangers anonymously all made possible through a device that we hold in our hands has severely hampered not only face to face interactions but also negatively affected productivity.

Our world population is 7.7 billion (b) with 4.3 b online users i.e. 56% of the world is online. Facebook has 2.4 b users, YouTube & WhatsApp both have 2 b users DAILY each. Whilst other platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Instagram & WeChat all have users over 1 b. The cumulative time spent by the world on social media alone in 2019, stands at staggering (more than) a billion years; Buckle (2019) claims 2.253 billion people turn to internet for news, opinions and current affairs where as looking at the most followed accounts on aforementioned platform, one can notice absence of news agencies in such a list. Most followed accounts are either footballers, celebrities, singers, media personalities and even record labels. Samsung is the only fortune 500 company to have considerable number of followers to make it to the list.

Why am I writing all these stats? Just to give an insight into how we are spending our time on social media. For me personally, an eye opener was my own screen time log. Having an Apple ecosystem, I was able to track my time spent across devices (including at work), I was surprised by the stats.

Am I ashamed sharing the above picture? YES!! I hate to admit that I spent 74 hours on social media during one week but then my excuse is being in digital marketing profession where my job entails maintaining social media pages (handles/ groups etc), analysis of page activity, online traffic etc. I also had an excuse for my time spent on entertainment related pages as it was again for work, where I have to not only upload content but also view uploaded content. Regardless of the excuses, I personally consider this as extreme use of social media and hence I decided to take control of the situation.

I divided my screen time between personal and professional use and to limit my own personal use, thanks to Apple Inc., I put locks on all social media apps that I was using. Anyone who owns an iPhone will know of the nagging screen time updates one receives weekly or even fortnightly (depending on notification settings). Those notifications will not only reveal your screen time distribution, but also the screen time control gives you an option to control your time spent on certain apps. I grabbed the opportunity and immediately limited all my social media apps (with the exception of LinkedIN, else I wouldn't have been able to spontaneously write this article) usage to 1.5 hours / day. The first day, I exhausted that limit just within four hours of starting my day. It was hard to not be able to see any Facebook updates, or to keep my friends informed on Snapchat why I haven't sent them more pictures during the day, or kept up with the streaks. However, after a week, the world started to make sense.

I had lost all but one out of my 17 streaks on snapchat with some over 200 days old, but my online friends had stopped calling me late at night to join gaming tournaments on a gaming app, and most of my WhatsApp messages were unanswered. The positive amongst all this? I was able to finish three books that I had been wanting to read but would always delay (Destructive emotions by Daniel Goleman and Dalai Lama, Incerto which is a compilation of Nasim Nicholas Taleb's work and contains four books, and the alchemy of happiness by Al Ghazali). Not only that, I enrolled myself in a couple of Coursera courses and was able to finish five of them way earlier than the anticipated course outline.

Screen time lock proved to be a tool for me to increase my own productivity and do things that I not only liked but enjoyed doing. I wonder how else can I, and others, increase productivity amid distractions offered by social media. Ideas? Opinions? Views? Also, have a look at your own screen time stats. Do you see a pattern that needs to be broken? I'd love to know your suggestions on increasing productivity and staying away from distractions offered by social media.