Lately, I’ve embarked on a journey of decluttering my space. This includes my mental space and physical space. It started with social media where I found myself living in it. Chasing two or three likes with the numerous shares of memes. Sharing images of people and cultures I find intriguing. Why? The truth is, through sharing images of cultures I find intriguing and sharing memes, it’s because I was seeking validation. However, it gets deeper than seeking validation.
The world is consumed by an overwhelming amount of stimulus that is everywhere. It is on your phone with social media, in your home with radio and TV, and on the streets with posters. Wherever we go, we are bombarded with some mental stimulus that distracts and robs us of our attention. Someone might say that it is not as bad as it sounds. Spending 10 mins every hour on Twitter, TicTok or Instagram is not that much time. However, when you do the math, that 10 mins builds up quickly.
Here's the math:
10 mins every hour. A day has 24 hours so that’s 4 hours a day on social media. Let’s put that into the perspective of an average person’s day:
6 hours: sleep
1 hour: grooming and preparing for the day.
2 hours: relaxation (cooking, watching TV, eating)
8 hours: work (most of us do not work a total of 8 hours but we are at our place of work for the full 8 hours)
4 hours: social media.
You left with 3 hours out of 24 of free time.
That amounts to 3 hours a day that you have to yourself. 3 hours a day to pursue your passions. 3 hours a day to engage in your hobbies and interests. And this does not highlight the psychological and mental damage that social media has on individuals. Research has proven that social media is a toxic entity and is a poison to young women and men.
I am merely focusing on the time that social media robs the average individual. And 10 mins every hour for most people is the very bare minimum for being on social media. Some of us get lost in a social media “wormhole” where we end up scrolling endlessly.
And this boils back to the beginning of this particular post. The world is faced with an overwhelming presence of information that we humans were never ready for. I once read a fact that stated that people see fewer ghosts in the modern world than in medieval times and the middle ages because humans in the modern world are more engaged and stimulated with their surroundings. Therefore, our minds are so engaged with various stimulating elements that we no longer recognise or see ghosts which were products of idle minds of the ancient world.
Time is the measurement of life. Time is what tracks the moments we had, have, and will have in our life. So, social media robbing us of time, it is in fact robbing us of life. 4 hours a day, broken into 10 minutes every hour doesn’t sound so bad. It is when it accumulates over the course of the day that we realise the true nature of what 10 minutes an hour can do. Imagine replacing that 10 minutes on social media with a 10 min walk around your place of employment or residence.
I had originally begun writing this post to break down the journey that I am on of decluttering elements in my physical and mental space. I did not intend to focus on social media. But social media has become so entrenched in society that its effects have intervened in the fabric of society. It is an anomaly if someone does not have a Twitter, Instagram or TikTok account. But even for those who do not have these accounts, chances are their 10 mins are spent watching a video or YouTube. Their 10 mins are compounded by binge-watching a series every day after work.
The truth is, the world has created a system that has effectively enslaved many of us into thinking we are alive when in reality we are lifeless zombies. We are living corpses that have no clear grasp on what life is. Simply because the life we live is a fabrication of what we saw on TV while growing up and now, it is a fabrication of what we see on social media.
It is one thing to understand this concept and aspire to break free. It is another concept to begin implementing the means to break free. Hence my decluttering journey. And hence I am sharing it on the blog hoping that I won’t embark on this journey alone.
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