Make the time

March 1, 2024

Following my previous post on social media, my mind continued to linger on the topic. What are the benefits of social media? Even though it can be a great way of staying in touch with friends and family, following musicians, artists, and groups you’re interested in, you have to be mindful of how much time you spend looking at it.

I like writing. It is what I do. It’s not even a question of a day going by where I don’t write. Writing is not my job, thankfully. I don’t make money from it. But not every day do I always feel so inspired to write. And in these moments of emptiness, it is easy to distract myself by flipping through social media.

The problem is this scrolling and participating comes at an expense. You are not writing or creating. Some people think you should delete social media but this is rather extreme because we do not become hyper efficient without social media. There will be times where inspiration is lacking and you can take a break. Distractions remain no matter what.

What can you do? It’s not always obvious. But it can sometimes be as simple as reflecting on how you are accessing social media, then make deliberate decisions to make it more difficult to look at and in turn use less. For example, earlier last year I fell into a spiral where using or looking at Instagram was filling me with a deep dreading anxiety. I decided to delete the app from my phone and only look at it on my computer where I’m much more disciplined. A few weeks later I installed it again because I use it to communicate with people, but I disabled most notifications.

I took a longer break from Discord on my phone. Once you join more than a few servers, it can feel unwieldy. Some servers also like to send messages to @everyone which gets annoying. But if you don’t open Discord every day, the number of unread channels and messages continues to grow. I found myself checking certain servers every day and finding the content empty and unfulfilling. It filled me with a similar sort of anxiety and dread as with Instagram. I ended up logging out of Discord knowing the complexity of logging back in was enough to keep me away. I still use Discord on occasion, but I don’t check it everyday.

In retrospect, it seems obvious. Cutting back on something shouldn’t feel like a sacrifice. I’m making specific choices with intent to take back my time. If social media isn’t making you feel good, take a break. Make the time to do something creative. There isn’t any other way.