It’s the first of September, autumn in Finland. School has started, and I must say we have had an excellent start for the new school year.
For me, along with many people around the world, September means time to quit using social media for a month. I believe we all should do this kind of a change for a while. Although we don’t admit it easily, many of us feel pressure of being online all the time. Even our self-esteem may be built of thumbs, likes and follower amounts. That is something I am not going to accept. I want to breathe freely, be myself and live my life in real world noticing other people and environment we are living in. Sometimes life isn’t perfectly filtered, but so what. Who wants to live perfect life in perfect world?
Easy step towards freedom
The first and only step was to log out all the social media mobile applications. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn… Everything, except my website, that I am going to keep updating during this period.
At the same time it means decisions about what to do with all the time I am not scrolling, communicating virtually or thinking about social media contents? Well, as we all know, time is money. Time has it’s value, and we constantly make tradeoffs between different activities with values and opportunity costs. We keep deciding whether we want to see a movie or read instead. When at school we can think about what could we do with all that time, and how much money could we earn if working instead. Even sleeping and taking it easy have opportunity costs. So quitting social media for a month means a tradeoff between time used to social media, and time and freedom to do something else.