Disclaimer: Though I may have singled out Facebook but it’s more or less true for any social media platform.
How do you know Facebook is using you?
- Everyday you feel the urge to share what you had in the breakfast, lunch or dinner.
- You take picture intending to show something but your face is shown larger than the objects in the background.
- You wake up in the morning and first thing comes to your mind to check how many people liked or reacted to your post last night.
- Your Facebook video has auto play enabled. When you wanted to watch just one video but ended up watching for half an hour or more.
- You can’t resist a day not publishing a post on the Facebook. Even if you’ve nothing at all to say, you still post a status like “feeling lonely” or such.
- By any chance if you take a few days off from Facebook, when you log back in, you try to find if the world had missed you.
How do you know you rather use Facebook, not the other way?
- You can go live your “normal” social life without logging into Facebook for a week or more.
- Your supposedly “private” life still remains private.
How to use Facebook effectively?
Imagine! You have a hammer, a miracle tool. This is a very useful tool indeed. You can fix many things with a little bang here and there with this tool. You can also use it as a protection tool from a thug or a hijacker on the street. You can also use it for weight lifting during your exercise. You also can use it as a hook to pull something up or use it as a carry on hook. You can go on and on. But you are smart enough to not to use a hammer for all the necessities in your life. That doesn’t make sense. It’s so obvious to you. Facebook is also a tool, a social media tool but unfortunately it’s not so obvious to us that it’s built for a purpose. However, as it’s a new tool using the mew technologies: Internet and Smartphone, it doesn’t seem so obvious to all of us. A social media platform is purposed to use to connect people who live away from you, and not for your family members living in the same house or friends who you would see daily or weekly and you can go visit them. We would see ourselves as fool if we carry a hammer at all the time but we don’t perceive the Facebook, instagram, Snapchat, etc. in the same way because we still couldn’t grasp its true utility. Moreover the companies are making billions of dollars out of our ignorance so they encourage us to continue with our foolishness. They continue making money and we continue to spiral down to the “social” hell.
How to use Social Media platform as it should be used?
Define the goal(s) of your use of social media platform. It could be anything that’s aligned to the purpose of life such as, connecting with your family members living far apart, as resources for your education, use its Marketplace to do commerce, carrying out activities and awareness campaigns for the cause you believe in, etc. Bottom line is to making sure that you use this platform only to advance your goal you set forth. Review every now and then to check if you’re within that limit. As soon as you find yourself drifting away from that goal, you should be alarmed and get back to the lane immediately, just like the way the Lane Detector Warning (LDW) in your car works.
If you really want specific instructions: separate a certain time in a day to check social media. Better if you don’t use it everyday. Use only certain days in the week. Predefine it and stick to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment