Have you ever been at a social gathering and went on your phone to get onto a social media site even though you were already in a social gathering? Of course you have; we all have! Social media is a booming trend that is consuming the lives of billions. Whether grandma is checking on the grand-kids' Facebook pages or you're posting a Tweet from a party, everywhere you go you will find some trace of social media.
Now I do not intend to bash on social media here, I am just as guilty as the next guy, but I do believe it is time for us to take a step back from the screen (well after you finish reading this) and think about the facts. So lets get to it. Exactly how much of our lives do we dedicate to social media? 30 minutes? an hour? maybe two? Lets start by naming an average social media user, we will call him Joe. Joe is a pretty average 20 year old dude and uses the top 5 most used social media sites according to eMarketer: Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter. Because Joe is so average, he can't help but go astray from any average statistic so he follows suit with eMarketer's statistics and on average uses Facebook for 51 minutes a day, LinkedIn for 9.3 minutes a day, Pinterest for 25.6 minutes a day, Instagram for 29.9 minutes a day, and Twitter for 23.5 minutes a day, So in Joe's day, he spends about 139.9 minutes or a little under two and a half hours a day on social media. Let's also say that Joe wakes up at 8 AM and goes to bed every night at 11 PM, or in other words, he is awake for about 15 hours every day. That means that Joe will spend 15% of his day on social media. That is more time than a person spends eating in a day!If you're not even a little worried right now, you probably should think about it some more and it will hit you later because these numbers are disgusting.
So what is it about social media that draws us in so heavily? Is it the convenience? Is it our need to show off who our friends are publicly? Or is it just really that fun? I'm not qualified to answer that question, but maybe you can share your insight.
The bottom line is, with the average Joe spending 15% of their waking hours of the day on social media, the line between a person's online life and offline life begins to become blurred. People are no longer simply just the person you know from face to face contact, now everyone can see everyone else's online activity; which means that maybe now you don't like Kate as much anymore cause she likes the Louis Vuitton Facebook page and you hate Louis Vuitton because they screwed you out of the online deal.
So let me end this blog post with some thoughts: should we keep our online lives and offline lives separate? Or is it ok for the two to mix? Does it perhaps force people into living more open lives? and is that even preferable?
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