Social Media-Free Weekend

I'm off the grid. I said I'd do more of these weekends a while back, but I hadn't really started focusing on how or when these social media-free weekends would take place. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but it never really came to pass as someone would text me or someone would tweet at me or use Facebook messenger to contact me. However, I am fully enforcing the idea of no social media this weekend as I have a million things I want to get done around HBIC Headquarters and out and about in the real world.

After hearing the uproar of Kevin Hart's stepping away from hosting the Oscars, it's time that we really start embracing the fact that our social media accounts are really an extension of ourselves in the real world. If one is generally an unkind human being off social media, there should be no surprise about how one conducts one's self on social media. The opposite is true as well - if you're working to make positive changes in this world, that will also shine through on social media. And no, I wasn't bullied on social media to prompt this vacation.

I needed to step back and ask what value I was finding in social media interactions before I could properly evaluate whether my time on these sites was being used effectively. I've already written off Facebook, so we can pretty focus exclusively on Twitter for this evaluation. According to research published one year ago, the average person spends approximately two hours per day on social media. I would say I fall into that category, and it occurred to me that I often find myself wishing I had more time to do things I want to do.

At that two-hours-per-day rate of usage, Social Media Today found that one would use social media for a total of five years and four months in a lifetime - NEARLY FIVE AND A HALF YEARS! That's enough time in my life to get a bachelor's degree in something and do more with my life. Why am I finding this out now?

It was looking into some of these numbers that I've decided to reclaim some of that time from social media. While I'll still use it to find highlights and talk to people I would otherwise never meet, I can't complain about having no time if I'm wasting it on social media.

In saying that, this weekend is all about getting stuff done. I have 101 things I want to do, and I'm going to work at knocking off as many of those things as I can. I won't get everything done, but I will be able to make a sizable dent in the list if I stay off social media all weekend and use those four hours more productively. That's four hours I could be cleaning, making food, building something, or running errands. It's simply just four hours I can use for myself when it comes to reading the stack of books I still want to read.

Most of all, though, it's four hours where I can do something productive. That still means something to me.

Expect very little from me this weekend when it comes to social media. I may pop in every now and then, but it's literally not going to be for more than a minute or two. That list won't complete itself, so it's about time that I get my butt in gear and started crossing items off. No matter how many followers, likes, and retweets I have, they never seem to make that list shorter.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!