Social Networks are extremely addictive and bad for you and I. I am loosing my discipline !! Not only me, even some of my friends are lamenting, as they have grown from spending 2 hours a day browsing the Internet to spending more than 6 hours parading social networks, from one network to another, depending on which connects them to friends, to which allows them to share their pictures and even to which tells their friends and colleagues what they are up to at that particular moment. The variety of what you can use social networks for today, is alarming.

Social networks developer’s themselves don’t make it easy on you, as they have spent millions of dollars and would continue to do so, into building a platform that glues you to their sites and help them convert the dollars into more dollars, hence making their shareholders happy.

A social network like Facebook, allows you to stay  updated with your networked relationships.  Twitter on the other hand allows you to communicate on what you are doing at a particular moment to your followers, and  I can see that many members are already using it as a chatting platform, to blabber their thoughts away and get responses to the blabber. I doubt that the developers had such usage in mind, during development.

How many Hours do you spend on social networks?

Do you spend more than 2 hours a day on any social network? If you do, then you surely need help. You can start by helping yourself make a list of things you gained through spending such an amount of time on a social network and comparing it with your daily goals in life.

I spend approximately 2 hours on week days and perhaps more on weekends, that I have been missing my book and magazine reading timetable.  I  spend most of my time reading up on picture commentaries, following up on status post, and even the links in facebook. I feel sorry for myself, as I have started deteriorating intellectually, on a daily basis, thanks to this social networks. Don’t get me wrong they have their justifiable usages and perhaps applications, but certainly wasting my precious hours in them, is not one.

I don’t learn anything new on this social networks, hence they are more of an instrument to waste of my time than a platform to actually benefit from.

How to avoid wasting your precious time on social networks?
1. Have a list of things to do online and assign time to them.
2. Don’t go drifting into checking every status and picture commentaries you see on this networks.
3. Use the logout button once your time expires, I mean it. Staying logged in would lure you into checking out something else.
4. Make a list of why you visit this social networks and ensure that you actually benefit from the lists.
5. Ensure you follow 1-4 religiously.

There are some usage of  social networks which doesn’t fall under this category such as
- Business Networking
- Public Relations for Businesses
- Marketing
- Organisational Collaboration
and even
-Keeping in touch with distant friends

Do you feel or think otherwise? Let me know through your comments…