Social networks have become an integral part of our lives – we can hardly imagine a day without viewing photos on Instagram or posting notes on Twitter.
When opening applications such as Facebook or Vkontakte, we often spend much more time scrolling through the news feed than we expected – and this time becomes “lost”, “dead” for us. We constantly carry our phones with us, push notifications on which, time after time, grab our attention and make us open social networks again.
According to a market research company report, users around the world spend an average of 2 hours and 23 minutes per day on social media.
However, the opposite trend is also noted: the report also shows that people are becoming more aware of their addiction to social networks and are trying to fight it.
Nowadays, there are more and more new applications that track the time of using social networks. One such app is , which counts the time you spend looking at a screen and tells you how many books you could read in that time.
According to the Omni Calculator, if you reduced your social media usage by just half an hour a day, you could read 30 more books in a year!
Digital monitoring tools have become a ubiquitous trend. Google users can now see app usage times, and Android users can set app usage time limits. Similar features are offered by Apple, Facebook and Instagram.
, about 75% of people are more satisfied with their phone experience if they use a digital wellbeing app.
The Omni Calculator app offers other ways to plan your time on social media, as well as the number of calories you could burn by spending time at the gym instead of social media, or a list of alternative skills you could learn .
According to the creators of Omni Calculator, just a few five-minute social media breaks per hour is hundreds of hours spent per year. Cut your time on social media in half and you’ll have plenty of time to read, run, work, and other tasks.
Here are a few tips to help you fight social media addiction: turn off push notifications, uninstall some apps, call your friends instead of texting them, and take a break from all social media from time to time.
It is undeniable that social networks have many advantages and they have made our life much easier and more interesting. But despite this, a lot of research proves that social networks can not have the best effect on our brain function, relationships and productivity. Try to keep track of the time you devote to social networks, and at least reduce it a little, doing other things that require your attention instead – and the result will not be long in coming.