Life’s Most Valuable Asset is Time. Invest Wisely.
I distinctly remember the first time I was tagged in a photo on Facebook. “Whoa. Come check this out. There are pictures of us online!” said my roommate. Puzzled, I hustled over to see what she was talking about. Sure enough, several photos of us together at a sorority event the previous year appeared, with our names highlighted next to each of the images. We received a corresponding email notification from Facebook letting us know that our photos had been tagged… and life would never be the same.
No longer was it realistic to expect that an outfit, costume or hairstyle would be forgotten within a month or two of a given event. There was now a detailed and willingly-supplied photographic account of all of it. Everything! At first, this seemed like an incredible novelty. Who needed supermarket tabloids when you could self-subscribe to see what your friends were up to!? And heck, some folks that weren’t even really friends, but acquaintances you’d met once or twice that you’d extended or accepted a friend request from out of common courtesy. The unintended consequences of displaying life’s highlights online wouldn’t become clear to me until years later.
Studying abroad in Heidelberg, Germany my sophomore year, I felt disconnected from my college campus and the United States generally. Seeing photos of myself from the year prior felt like a window into another lifetime — a reality that I knew existed, but had faded into the background of my consciousness. I’d forgotten what we were wearing that day, but seeing those images brought me instantly back to the moment my roommate and I decided that coordinating bright red puma pants, sweatbands and white tanks were clearly the best choice for a broomball fraternity/sorority mixer. I studied the images with relief, noting that my makeup looked good and my Southern California tan hadn’t yet begun to fade.
The novelty of tagging oneself and others in Facebook posts took off like wildfire. These were the days when in order to have a Facebook account, you had to have a university email address, so there was no risk of anyone but your peers (or so we thought) seeing embarrassing photographic evidence of questionable undergraduate decision-making. I was instantly hooked, as were the 40-odd college kids I shared a house with that year.
Creating entire Facebook photo albums for weekend trips became the norm, as did taking scores of photos to ensure “one of them was good enough to post.” Back in the states the following year, I began checking my Facebook photos prior to events such as weddings and graduations to ensure that I hadn’t already been photographed in the outfit I planned to wear. Looking back, I know it was at this point that my behavior was influenced by social media without me fully realizing it. This led me straight into the trap of Fast Fashion and an overaccumulation of ‘stuff’ that I thought I needed. My prized, hard-won online persona required photographic evidence that I was having an amazing time and keeping up with the latest trends, thank you very much.
As the years went on, Facebook opened itself up to anyone that wanted an account — undergraduate student or not. Multiple generations began using the platform, and it wasn’t uncommon to receive friend requests from junior high coaches, parents of friends…even grandparents were jumping on! Of all of the groups of users on the site, none seemed as stridently dedicated to constantly uploading and updating content as the generation to which I belong — Millennials — and I was no exception.
Looking back, I can see how my own vanity, insecurity, and competitive nature made me an ideal Facebook user. I looked forward to new feature additions, such as the display of statuses, friend counts, and stories, eagerly learning the ins and outs of each as I continued to faithfully invest time into building my online persona of effortless perfection. This was in spite of the fact that more often than not, my ‘online self’ had no bearing whatsoever on the reality of whatever struggles or hardship I was experiencing at the time. Ultimately, I twisted what had originally been a positive place for connection and sharing into an insidious trap of one-upmanship and humble bragging.
It wasn’t until my early thirties — after nearly 15 years of investing hundreds of hours into the site — that I realized how frequently I was at least partially doing things for the sake of the Facebook (and later, Instagram) post, because of how cool I thought it would make me look — not for the sake of actually doing or experiencing them. Instead of immersing myself in my current life experience, I was halfway in and halfway out of true reality, always lending my attention to the highly curated, portrayed reality that I wanted others to see. Not only was this not healthy, leading me to constantly compare myself to others — it was a monumental, colossal waste of time. After all, we each get the same 168 hours to invest every week, and I’m frankly not sure how many of mine went into a zero-return activity — scrolling through and intermittently posting to social media.
Having since deleted my Facebook account entirely, it pains me to think of the businesses I could have built, the art or music I could have created, or the writing I could have done in the time that I willingly handed over for over a decade without receiving anything in return. I can’t think of any other pastime (if one can call it that?) that I’ve happily poured so much of my life’s energy into, only to later on decide to discard it altogether. Ultimately, no one but me bears the responsibility for throwing away all of those hours — but at least I can write about it in the hopes that sharing my experience encourages others to choose a better path.
Like money, we can choose to invest our time into lasting pursuits, or we can spend it on day to day activities and experiences with nothing to show for it at the end of the road. With the exception of folks using social media to run a business, it bears pausing and asking yourself what the ROI (Return on Investment — what you receive in exchange for what you give) is of the time spent on social media. If you’re like me, you may come to the painful realization that not only is the ROI zero, its actually probably negative…and worse, unlike money, time is a finite resource that cannot be earned back. Once its gone — its gone forever.
Knowing this, in addition to a barrage of concerning statistics about the negative effects of social media on the mental health of users, not to mention concerns with disinformation and misinformation that runs rampant on the site, take a moment and consider the hobbies, relationships, passion projects, or side hustles you might pursue ‘if you had the time.’ Would you train for a triathlon? Start, or perhaps finish, that novel or short story? Would you learn another language, or volunteer for a worthy cause? Perhaps you would pick back up with a half-completed photography portfolio, or that screenplay you started, but left unfinished?
The truth is, you DO have the time — the same 168 hours a week as anyone else. Equally as important — there is no other you. There never has been, and there never will be. You and you alone possess a unique combination of personality, talent and skill that could be deployed in a phenomenal way to positively influence the world around you.
So why not start today? Instead of using social media as a Band-Aid to cover the gaps in your day, perhaps start by letting your mind wander to see what comes up for you. No need to commit to anything crazy, but simply completing the exercise of letting your mind wander can be revelatory. Next, make a mini action plan of the first step you’ll take to use that time to create something meaningful — and, hear me well — meaningful in whatever way YOU believe it to be. The opinions of others aren’t relevant here, because you know yourself and your unique passions and talents better than anyone.
Will you join me on my journey back to the real world? I’d always loved to write growing up, and somewhere along the way that fell by the wayside after college. Free of the constraints of social media and feeling like I “need” to update my status or document whatever I’m currently doing that “looks cool” (trust me — I’m NOT cool!), I am choosing to intentionally invest this time into writing once again. My goal is to encourage readers to recognize their inherent value and make the most of what they’ve got — which may in turn inspire others to do the same.
So please, during this craziest of years complete with a tragic and deadly global pandemic, seemingly never-ending lockdowns, negative news cycles, and reasons to be discouraged — choose the proactive creation of lasting value instead of the passive consumption of social media. Consider where and how you’d like to invest your time, and what you’d like to achieve for the sake of the undertaking itself.. not for the sake of the subsequent Facebook post.
