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The Social Dilemma is a reality, for instance, Mindless scrolling, people are addicted to mindlessly scrolling on social media, especially for short entertaining videos. Even though they are short they could easily steal your hours from your productive day. Especially students, who are more prone to this addictive outbreak, and whose productive hours are more important than anyone else. An abstract from the research on Webology states that a significant portion of students spend more than 5 hours a day on social media. Read it till the end for a surprise tip.
Why are Social Medias are so addictive?
On an average students spend more than 5 hours a day on Social media
No doubt these platforms teach us so many things. Also, they help us be aware of so many things happening worldwide. But if not used wisely they will become the main culprit behind your procrastination and unproductive schedule. There’s a reason why big tech giants behind these platforms spend billions of dollars. Those billions of dollars are for developing the design and algorithm. Their main objective while designing is to trigger your brain. Whenever you achieve your goal, or eat something good, your brain releases a hormone known as dopamine. Dopamine (A neurotransmitter within your brain that works as a “reward center” and in many body functionalities such as movement, and motivation.) makes you feel happy and pleasing, and when something is pleasing, your brain will want it again and again.
Jonathan Zittrain at World Economic Forum
A Howard Law School, American Internet law Professor Once said “If something is free on the Internet, you are not the customer but a product”. These big tech giants make their platforms addictive just to utilize your time. Your time for watching advertisements on their platforms. In 2023 the net worth of the advertisement market was 600 billion US dollars. It is expected to grow more in 2024 up to 11.8%. Therefore, it is not possible shortly that these tech giants will be concerned about the growing screen times of their users.
A breakdown to avoid your mindless scrolling.
You will find multiple ways to tackle your mindless scrolling on the internet. But here are some of the most effective solutions. These solutions are given not by any random but by some ex-employees of various tech giants.
Make a Proper Schedule Where you limit your mindless scrolling to not more than 2 hours.
One of the most effective methods for reducing your screen time is creating a busy schedule. Make a schedule and categorize the work from compulsory to most interesting. After proper classification make a schedule where you could do both of them. Use the 60-30-10 rule, where 60 percent of your days are for your compulsory work. The rest 30% is for daily essentials and 10% is for the things you want to learn to meet someone or for a little bit of social media.
Use Grayscale mode.
Grayscale is a feature that makes your phone display colorless, however you can disable it whenever you want. Why make your beautiful display colorless? Well, there is a catch, Social media app logos are designed to look appealing. With these vibrant colors and logos, your brain will search for them every time you slide your app drawer. These appealing logos are there to trigger you to tap on them.
From Notifications to Mindless Scrolling.
Even after battling with your social media app logos, the next encounter will be from your notifications. Like Social media logos, notifications also work in the same way toward you. It always starts with “ Look! he or she has interacted with my post, I’ll just open it to check it. “. Soon you will find yourself in the state where you lose your 3o minutes in mindless scrolling. Even if you try to ignore them those notifications will multiply and pile up. So it’s better to turn them off and forget about them.
Instead, Utilize your time in making money.
If you are one of those people who want to get rid of mindless scrolling. I’m going to suggest a site known as MindSumo. A platform where big companies like PepsiCo, some clothing brands, and many other big brands solve their problems by crowdsourcing. MindSumo acts as a mediator between you and big companies raising their concerns regarding ground level. If your answer stands in the crowd they will reward you. Please go check out their site for more details.
Conclusion
Social media indeed is a powerful and productive tool. A mindful limited use of it is more beneficial than its addiction. Use all these strategies to prioritize your time and have a break from mindless scrolling. A small step at a time makes a big difference.
Source and References
- “Dopamine” Cleveland Clinic.
- “If something is free on the Internet, you are not the customer but a product” Youtube/ Jonathan Zittrain: The Web as random acts of kindness
- MindSumo
