What’s your time on social media?

Reading time: Less than 1 minute

This is my weekly installment of “writing about writing,” in which I scan the world to find websites, books and articles to help other writers. Today I discuss an infographic on how we spend time on social media…

When I was a kid in the 1960s, my mother used to tell us the TV was broken. We’d turn the knob and, sheesh, she was right. No picture came on screen.

She pulled this trick for a good three years before we figured out that she’d removed the Cathode-ray tube herself. She wanted us to read. Or, better yet, go outside to play.

Now, TV is no longer the issue. It’s Netflix. Or, even worse, the time-suck of Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. And the issue doesn’t just face kids. It also tortures the adults themselves. So, if you’re a writer, I’m going to ask you to consider your time on social media.

I think about this time-suck  whenever I need to go back onto Facebook (which I quit in 2018, even though I still maintain a presence so I can use Facebook Messenger, when necessary.)

Anytime I appear on Facebook, messages start to pour in. And the sound of the dreaded “ping” is like fingernails on a blackboard to my ears.

Now, I see, thanks to an informative infographic (small detail above) from the people at FameMass that roughly 45% of the world’s population uses social media and 98% of those say they’ve used in the last month. Facebook is the leading offen contender taking 58 minutes of our time each day. Interestingly, the Philippines is the leading country in the world in terms of social media time at 4 hours and one minute.

If you want to write, then write. Don’t spend so much time on social media. Take out the Cathode-ray tube yourself!

An earlier version of this post first appeared on my blog on Sept. 2/19.

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