Upāsaka

At some point several years ago, I decided to quit social media because it did not add value to my life. The information that I received through social media could be found elsewhere, and the connections made were trivial. There was no place in my life for spending time on social media. Today, I can think of many ways that I would prefer to spend my time over scrolling through posts that serve only to distract from life rather than enhance it.

Over the past year, I've been working hard on building relationships in real-life, and for the most part I've succeeded. One thing I've noticed about building and maintaining real-life relationships is that they are a hundred times more valuable than anything you could do online. Interacting with someone only a handful of times in person will leave an impression much greater than if you were to interact with them fifty times through some messaging platform. This is because a personal interaction requires far more commitment than responding asynchronously to messages. By asynchronous I am referring to communication that does not require the sender and receiver to be available at the same time. You can respond to text messages at your convenience, for example, but you cannot do this in a face-to-face conversation.

Then there is the argument that real-life relationships come first, and then social media helps maintain those relationships. However, let's put some numbers to it to see how valuable those online interactions are. Now, I'm sure there is some study out there that has somehow measured this, but for now I'll throw out some relative numbers. Suppose that the value of an online interaction is 1. Then, a real-life interaction would be valued at 100. Given the sheer difference in magnitude, I have concluded that it's not worth putting time into those 1 value relationships. It's like working smarter instead of working harder. You can work three jobs to make extra money, but if you play the right cards and know the right people (from real-life interactions, of course) then you can make a hundred times more from a single job.

Some people might still say there is no harm in social media, and I agree. There is no harm, but there is an opportunity cost. Certain activities provide far more value than spending time on social media, so I see it as a rational approach to choose the activities of higher value. By the time I'm done with these activities, there is no time left for social media.

Choose the human connection which has immensely more value, discard the rest, and live well knowing that you are using your time in the most effective manner.