Do you ever find yourself scrolling aimlessly on Instagram or Facebook?

It’s no secret that whilst phones are great for keeping in touch with people and making our lives allegedly easier, they can also have a catastrophic impact on our productivity. For most people, their mobile phone is the first thing they look at in the morning and the last thing they look at at night - as well as over 50 times during the day! - meaning they waste a copious amount of time, especially around  social media, that could be spent bettering their personal or professional lives.

So how badly does social media actually affect our lives and how can we break free from it to achieve an unstoppable career?

The Shocking Truth About How Much Time We Really Waste on Social Media

Social media is designed to be addictive. The average screen time for an adult in the UK per day is 3 hrs 23 mins. While this might not sound like too much time, it quickly adds up:

• Daily: 3 hrs 23 mins
• Weekly: 23 hrs 41 mins (almost an entire day)
• Monthly: 94 hrs 44 mins (almost 4 days)
• Yearly: 1,136 hrs 48 mins (47 days)

In addition, studies show that on average, people check their phone 58 times per day - 30 of those times are during work hours!

While the average time people spend on their phone when they check it is only around 2 mins, studies show that it takes 23 mins 15 secs (on average) to refocus after a distraction like checking your phone. Even more concerningly, research by AMA found that even brief interruptions can make you lose as much as 40% of your productive working time.

The main reason some people don’t realise quite how much time they spend on their phones is that they only recognise typical platforms like Instagram and Facebook as social media when in reality, there’s many more sneaky platforms that sap our time without us necessarily always realising, including:

• YouTube
• Pinterest
• WhatsApp
• LinkedIn
• Messenger

Why Time Really is Our Most Valuable Commodity 

No matter whether you’re a millionaire like Elon Musk, or your average Joe Bloggs , we all experience time in the same way  and it’s what we do with this time that determines our future.

Instead of aimlessly scrolling through social media and living our lives through others, we could be putting that time to good use and taking steps towards a more successful future. 

Like countless people around the world have done before, Jason Zook, writer at WanderingAimfully, took 30 days off from social media and realised that “taking a break from social media frees up time and mental space you didn't know you'd lost. Doing a social media detox puts you back in control of how you use these platforms.”

How to Stop Being a Slave to Your Facebook Feed

The first step to stopping your life from revolving around social media is to reframe how you see it - most people put a lot of pressure on themselves by comparing their lives to the people they see on social media, research suggests that this is likely to lead to a lack of drive and motivation, rather than inspiration and action. Many people are also convinced that they must reply to messages immediately, another sap of energy and time.

It’s important to remember that almost no message truly requires an immediate response, and that social media is merely a highlight reel of the best parts of others’ lives - we should stop worrying about what others are doing and start focusing on ourselves.

What Can You Achieve Instead?

With, on average, an extra 3 hours a day, there are countless things that you could achieve or begin working towards, including:

• Improving a soft skill e.g. active listening
• Learning how to use new software e.g. Photoshop
• Developing a new skill e.g. delegation
• Improving your market knowledge and awareness
• A formal qualification

For example, a Level 5 CMI-Accredited Leadership and Management Apprenticeship takes around 4 days a month to complete. As we mentioned earlier in this article, the average person spends 94 hrs 44 mins (almost 4 days) on social media each and every month. So in that time, you could gain a professional qualification to advance your career.

What really separates ‘good’ from ‘great’ people is their dedication to continuous learning and development. The majority of people are extremely unlikely to swap out social media for learning as it can seem daunting, however, those that do are the ones who will be most likely to go on to achieve great things and build an outstanding career. This is a truly easy win to start on your path to becoming part of the top 5%.

To get you started on your journey to achieving an unstoppable career, we have created a fantastic ‘Social Media: Quit Cold Turkey’ 4-week challenge.

This challenge will help you break free of social media and highlight how to use your free time to achieve an unstoppable career. 

To download this challenge, you can click here or click the button at the bottom of this page.

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We hope that you take on our ‘Break Free from Social Media in 4 Weeks By Quitting Cold Turkey’ challenge and share it with any of your friends or colleagues who spend a little too much (or a lot) of time on social media.

Until next time...