Social media plays such a central role in the way we engage with others and stay informed it’s sometimes hard to remember how we all functioned and stayed in touch before the likes of Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Instagram, to name but a few, established themselves.
And yet, as they take over more and more of our mental effort and sit at the core of our cultural engagement, there is a growing body of evidence and opinion that we need to be careful about our social media use and actively decide how we want to engage with it.
The fundamental aim of this piece is to explain the benefits available from social media and the potential downfalls, and how to hopefully side-step the downfalls. Specifically, in this piece I will cover the following:
Benefits of social media
Drawbacks of social media
Social media for JAB Lifestyle Vs personal use
My social media manifesto
My belief is that each of us needs to decide what it is we want from social media and then choose the apps and our usage around that, rather than becoming addicted to multiple different formats, which will see us spending hours mindlessly scrolling through, without any focus or aim in mind.
Most people will agree that different forms of social media are a good way to:
Engage with friends and make friends with people with who we share common interests
Discover new, interesting & diverse opinions/perspectives
Provide motivation to change things in your life
Find and learn new skills/opportunities
In this article I will primarily focus on the use of social media for personal use, and not business use, although I will briefly talk about my use of social media for this website but mainly to show how it differs from my personal uses. Some of the core elements of social media that make it such a great tool for businesses, is the same thing that makes it toxic for individuals, but more on this later.
If you take nothing else from this post, I hope it will make you think more consciously about why you are engaging social media – whatever the platform – and ensure your usage matches that rationale, if it isn’t, you should cut it out and realise how many hours per week of time you’ll recover!
Benefits
As social media is so prevalent in modern society it’s typical to think there must be a good reason for it, otherwise why is it so universal? However, taking a few minutes to understand the benefits might help you re-define what you get from it, and remind you what you might actually want to get from it. Below are the 5 broad benefits I see:
Feel connected – Social networks help you stay connected with so many more people online than you could in person. You can update hundreds, thousands or millions of people on the latest thing happening in your life with a few clicks, and everyone else can do the same thing.
Broaden your horizons – By following the right individuals and organisations you can see life and topics you find interesting through a different perspective and uncover information, resources and ideas you’d never have discovered alone.
Learn new skills – Skills which used to cost thousands of pounds to learn are now available for free in multiple different formats. Think of all the tutorials available for free on YouTube and similar sites, from language skills, to carpentry, to computer programming; social media helps collect the best resources available to make you learn faster and ultimately be better at your new skill. Social media is also likely to help provide a community of people who are learning at the same time as you, who can provide comradery and insight during the process.
Commonality of interests – You might feel like an outsider in the place you live, but online you will almost certainly find hundreds, if not thousands, of people who find the same things as you do interesting.
Real time news – Think of the Arab Spring, social media can shift the world’s perspective. Social networks allow you to choose where you receive your news, and provide it to you instantly, oftentimes unfiltered and raw.
Provide a mental ‘rest’ – While not an often-sighted reason, it is definitely a significant one for me. I often go on social media when I need a ‘break’ from thinking, and want to take in some easy content. I have a tough job and find that going on social media can be a way of helping me switch my attention to things less important or more fun. It is a similar reason to why I had the ‘Boom Beach’ app on my phone. For a long time, spending a few minutes a day on it used to help me switch off. I recently deleted the app as I no longer felt that (in fact I started to feel that if I didn’t play a few minutes every day I’d lose my progress, so it’s now been deleted).
Drawbacks
While the benefits highlighted above may have reminded you of why you originally got on social media, I’m sure some of the 7 drawbacks I detail below will also resonate with you:
Bullying – Not many people think about bullying as a thing once they leave school, but the anonymity of many social networks makes it easy for people to bully others and say truly horrible things they would never say to your face. This is made worse by the fact individuals increasingly don’t know the people they are ‘putting down’, they are strangers without any human connection, which makes it easier for them to be so horrible and offensive.
Impact on sleep – Social media is addictive. Some of the smartest individuals around today are collectively spending millions of hours, being paid large amounts of money to purely focus on how to get you to spend a few extra minutes each day on their social media app. The addictive nature means we are more likely to be checking our phones or on our laptops in bed. The research is clear, the light for our devices, short-wavelength-enriched blue light, inhibits the body’s release of the sleep-inducing hormone called melatonin. Without melatonin we don’t feel sleepy and don’t get as much sleep as our body & brain need to recharge and restore.
Impact on productivity – Social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. have a vested interest in keeping you on their site for longer. The longer you stay on a site the more adverts you will consume and the more likely you are to buy something from as a result of these adverts. Never forget, that is the sole purpose of these sites, helping you stay connected is simply a by-product. Therefore, billions of pounds are spent annually by these companies to distract you from what you are meant to be doing and spend more time scrolling through the app. This badly impacts your productivity.
Lose connection with people – It’s an oxymoron of social media, in the same breath it can make you both more and less connected to people. Whilst updating your friends with what you are doing or sharing a photo can bring you closer to them, doing it purely online makes building and maintaining deep meaningful in-person relationships and friendships harder.
Depression – Scrolling through Instagram – to name just one app – can make you feel like everyone has a perfect life except for you. Your brain isn’t very good at keeping things in perspective and reminding you that Instagram is just a highlights reel. On the whole, people don’t post the normal, boring or bad experiences they have; only sharing their best moments, which are often enhanced with many different filters. That’s why people get depressed, they look at all the highlight reels and ask why their lives aren’t as good, it’s easy to see the trap when you take a step back, but all too real for many people every day.
Confirmation Bias – Confirmation bias is one of the most talked about psychology mental models (for more information on mental models check out my post on them here) and the rise of social media is probably the most significant reason for this. Confirmation Bias is when one ends up seeing – either through directly looking for, or social media algorithms surfacing ‘evidence’ that confirms an individual’s pre-existing beliefs. For example, users of Facebook are more likely to see news items appear on their feed that fit with their political beliefs. Brexit really brought the power of this home to me. I was totally shocked by the fact that Britain voted to leave the European Union, in no small part because on Facebook and Twitter I very rarely saw anyone sharing anti-EU posts, and no ‘news articles’ on these platforms suggesting anything other than Brexit being a terrible idea.
Privacy Issues – The amount of data each of these sites hold about each of their users is ridiculous and it seems almost a quarter doesn’t go by without yet another whistle-blower shining the light on how much data is being taken and often sold to 3rd parties, think Snowden & Cambridge Analytica. It’s not just massive companies who find this data useful, criminals will often look out for individuals posting to Mum on her birthday to try to gain access to accounts, how many people have a parent’s birthday as a security question? Or burglars who will target your house when they see you posting a photo of your 2-week holiday in Spain!
Personal Use Vs JAB Lifestyle
Now I’ve shone a light on some of the benefits and drawbacks of social media, I’m going to spend some time talking about how I try to engage with social media whilst mitigating and capping the impact the negatives have on me.
Let me start by explaining how I use the different social media platforms that I am on, for both personal use and for this website, JAB Lifestyle.
Personal Use
Engaging – I use social media as a way to follow updates from a wider pool of friends and family, reminding me of birthdays and messaging friends who I don’t regularly engage with. I wish I could delete Facebook and would tomorrow if it didn’t allow me to do these 3 things. I almost never post, never click on adverts or links, and only very occasionally add a few photos of what I’ve been doing over the last few months to keep my wider pool of friends and family updated.
Informative – Twitter is fantastic for breaking stories in topics I’m interested in and for being made aware of articles which might interest me without having to check out lots and lots of different websites.
Inspiration – This applies mostly to Instagram, but I use it as a reminder to get out there and make cool memories, not just look at photos of others doing it. Additionally, it gives me inspiration for different things to try out or places to visit.
My Accounts
Facebook – It’s where all my friends are (give or take a couple). I grew up with Facebook and it helps me to keep in contact with friends & family who live long distances away or who I’m no longer close to but interested to know how they are doing. I only really post to wish people Happy Birthday, I’ll accept a tag if someone uploads a photo of me, but very rarely post anything myself.
Twitter – I use Twitter primarily for real time news or insights from influencers in my passion areas. From rugby to minimalist design, skiing, world travel, investment and psychology, I get the latest and greatest insight and real time views from my Twitter account. On my personal Twitter account, I follow individuals or companies in the following fields/topics: sport, technology, friends, management/leadership, philosophy, psychology, investment, celebrities, style/fashion, journalists and authors.
LinkedIn – I only use LinkedIn for professional reasons. In fact, it’s simply a place for people to see my most up to date CV. Often clients or prospective clients want to see external validation of my abilities and experiences, so it’s important for that. I like to connect with thought leaders in my industry to ensure I’m aligned with current thinking and trends, and well as grow my own professional thought leadership skills and credentials.
Instagram – In the last 6 months or so, I have combined my JAB Lifestyle & personal Instagram accounts, more information below.
JAB Lifestyle
I very quickly realised I didn’t enjoy the ‘marketing’ side of blogging, I’ve written about this before, you can read that post here, but for me the reason for writing this blog is to get me to do in depth research into areas I’m interested in, keep me going on new habits, or help me stop bad habits by having social pressure to hold me accountable. I quickly realised I hated the ‘promoting’ aspects of starting a blog, so I simply stopped doing it.
My Accounts
Twitter – The fundamental reasons I use Twitter for JAB Lifestyle is similar to my personal account reasons, the only real difference is the fields/topics I follow. The fields/topics I follow individuals or companies on from my blogging account are podcast hosts, other bloggers, entrepreneurs, economics, productivity, politics, personal finance, fitness & adventure
Instagram – I use Instagram primarily as a way to be inspired about the next trip or adventure to take, as well as see what interesting things my friends are up to. I combined my personal and blogging Instagram accounts when I realised I wasn’t ever going to post much on either and I didn’t want the overhead of two accounts.
My Personal Social Media Manifesto
Now I’ve covered how I use social media platforms more broadly; I want to share with you the 10 points that make up my personal social media manifesto.
Having done this I realise that creating a manifesto is a great way for helping you verbalise and succinctly document your approach or perspective on things. Plus, by creating this and sharing it with the world, hopefully it’ll help me be more accountable and stick to this manifesto in the long term.
No notifications from social media apps – I haven’t got any social media app notifications turned on. I don’t want to be distracted by those accounts mindlessly. When I use them, I want it to be on my terms, when I’ve got something I want to gain from them, not the other way around. I find this really helps prevent me from mindlessly scrolling and procrastinating instead of getting on with something more important or productive.
Do my best to minimise the sharing of personal data / information – To prevent increasing the odds of being hacked or having accounts of others hacked, I will do my best to minimise the sharing of any personal data or information.
Never attack anyone – You never know their perspective, or their situation. Privately judge them all you want, but not publicly.
I will not post anything that everyone cannot see. No matter what your settings are, the real audience of anything you put on social media is the whole world. Once it is out there, it is out there.
I will not post whilst on vacation. In order to protect my property, I will not advertise absence from my home to the world. This will not stop me posting photos and experiences, but just mean I will only do so once I’ve returned.
I realize that anything I post will be open for discussion and judgment by others. When I post about myself, I open myself up for discussion. My posts can be social entertainment, gossip, or topics of conversations for others. Although I choose not to take part in that type of activity, I know I cannot stop others from doing so. Being myself puts me at risk for criticism, judgment, and possible unfriending. I don’t want to stop being myself – it is the best person I know how to be!
I will think very carefully before I post. Once you post something there is no way of taking it back. Even if you delete it, someone could have screen grabbed it and it could still go viral.
I will not follow for the sake of following – I regularly check who I am following and remove those who I don’t believe are offering genuine value to me anymore. I won’t unfollow just because I disagree with what they say.
I will actively look to diversify the opinions of individuals I follow – To help reduce the degree to which confirmation bias occurs for me, I will actively look to follow individuals who have a different perspective on important topics but who I still respect. Following Scott Adams on Twitter is a perfect example. I don’t agree with his opinions on the cleverness and abilities of Donald Trump, but I do respect the way in which he portrays his opinions and listening to him helps me ensure I don’t become too closed-off from positive opinions of Donald Trump.
I will never post recognisable photos of my children. I don’t have any children now, so this is a very easy one to live to at the moment. The impact of the internet having every photo of someone from day 0 to their death has not been understood, it’s only children born in the last 6-7 years to which it applies. I want to be able to give my children the ability to say yes or no to photos of their faces being available online. I’m not unique in having this view, some individuals I really respect, including Derek Sivers & Josh Waitzkin express similar views.
Conclusion
Social media apps have become a normal part of everyday life, and I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing, there are considerable benefits to these technologies.
The negative components and behaviours which these apps can induce come in when we stop being conscious and purposeful about our use, and instead are mindlessly scrolling and not thinking proactively about what we want from the applications.
I hope that sharing both the positives and drawbacks of social media, as well as my own social media manifesto, will help you to think more consciously about how you are using social media apps, and help improve your productivity by using them in a more intentional way.
