By: Kendall Schneider
The use of social media can sometimes be a controversial topic, but I think it is an important topic. Being a 21-year-old, I have grown up with social media from the time I was about 11 or 12. While that is not my whole life, social media has been around for a while now and has become a bigger part of my life than I even realized.
As I sat down to think about social media, I began to wonder how much time I spent on social media apps per day. I estimated about an hour, but when I actually kept track I found out that I was spending more than two hours on social media a day, and for me that includes Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest. I used an app called Quality Time, which you can download for free from the App Store or Google Play. It allows you to track the time you spend on each individual app, as well as the overall time that you spent on all of them combined. I would definitely recommend this app. What I found from it about myself shocked me.
After tracking myself to see how much I use social media, I did a short poll (on social media of course) to see how often other young adults use social media. I asked about 50 individuals two questions: Do you have three or more social media accounts? Do you use social media for more than one hour per day? Eighty-one percent said that they have three or more social media accounts, and 91 percent said that they spend more than an hour per day on social media. That probably means that most young adults spend at least an hour per day on social media, and potentially a lot more as I found out for myself.
Even an hour on social media a day adds up very quickly. One hour per day for a whole year is 365 hours, which comes down to about 15 days spent on social media per year. However, we have to remember that some social media use is for business. So, I suppose I am only talking about social media use outside of work.
The question I am asking myself, and everyone might want to ask themselves, is how could I better spend 15 whole days? While I love social media, and I will continue to use my favorite accounts, I am going to better manage the time that I actually spend looking at social media. I hope to replace some of my social media use with spending time with friends, laughing, and living a life that makes me forget to check my phone.
