When I was walking past a few shops a number of weeks ago, I saw that there were plenty of people on their Smartphone's. As it was not busy, these people were busy using their Smartphone's.

I ended up wondering how many books people like this could read if they did not use their phones as much. This did not come to mind because I thought that these people should be reading books, though.

A Waste of Time

It came to mind because I thought that they would get far more out of reading books than they would by using their device. Instead of scrolling through different social media sites, they would be able to expand their mind with new information.

Now, there is always the chance that these people were reading an eBook on their device or that they were sending important messages. I have no way of proving that these people were using different social media sites.

A Common Occurrence

However, even if these people were using their time in a productive manner, it does not mean that they will always use their time in this way. Furthermore, there are unduly a lot of people who do spend a lot of their time using these sites.

When I used to spend a fair amount of time using different social media sites in the past, time just appeared to fly by. But although a lot of time had passed, I had done very little with it.

Meaningless Messages

This was a time when I would send messages to people I actually saw in the real world and to people I had not seen in years. So, while a fair amount of dopamine was released within me, not much else took place.

I came to see that I could use my time better, which caused me to gradually cut down the amount of time I typically spent on these sites. Writing, reading and spending time with people in the real world become far more important.

Can You Relate to This?

If you can see that you are spending a fair amount of time on social media every day, and you want this to change, there are plenty of other things that you can do with your time. There are all sorts of books that you can read, if reading is your thing; if it is not, you could try a new hobby.

In the short term, it may not seem as though what you are doing is not having much of an impact on your life, but as time passes, you will see how much you have learned by spending less time on social media. Also, some of the time that you spent on social media will now go towards your goals, making it easier for you to achieve them.

Conclusion

The modem day world is so full of distractions that it can be easy to get lost in what is going on 'out there' and to forget about what is going on internally. Tuning into what matters is hard with so many distractions and, once we have done this, it takes a concerted effort not to be drawn off course by the bright lights that are all around us.