Thinking about Your Social Media

I'd like you to take a moment to think about social media.

Specifically, think about every social platform you've used in the past week.

Now ask yourself: if you had to give up all of them except for one, which one would you keep?

This will be a really difficult question for most of you, not just because you probably use multiple platforms every day, but also because you likely use them for different reasons.

Twitter can be really useful as a curated newsfeed, a way to learn about breaking news or understand pop culture, or a way to publicly "name and shame" companies that have offended you in some way. But it's not great for maintaining one-to-one connections with your friends.

LinkedIn is almost a requirement if you're career-oriented, especially if you work in the private sector. The newsfeed can be disorganized and overwhelming, and it's not the platform for maintaining regular contact with your friends. But if you're looking for a new job, a new hire, or a new person to pitch, it's tough to find a better platform.

Facebook can keep you connected to your loved ones.

Pinterest can inspire you.

Instagram, SnapChat, TikTok... the list goes on and on, and it's only getting longer. And let's not forget about all those messaging platforms you also use to stay connected: WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Viber, WeChat...

Want to guess how much time the average person spends on social networking and messaging platforms every day?

The answer is an astounding 2 hours and 22 minutes.

Let's put that into context: assuming six hours of sleep every night, the average person spends 13% of their waking hours on social media or messaging.

To be clear, I'm not judging. I can't, because I'm almost certainly worse than the average, justifying all the time I spend staring at my phone with, "I'm a marketer, I need to know what's happening on all these different platforms."

But that was before I realized I'm likely spending more than 36 days of my year on social media. (Do the math... it's astonishing, but true.) Now I'm beginning to think I could almost certainly make much better use of my time.

So, back to the question: if you had to give up all of your social media platforms except for one, which one would you keep?

Clearly, this is just a thought exercise. You obviously don't have to give up all of your social media. You don't have to give up any of it!

But perhaps after reading this, you might decide that taking a look at how much time you're spending on each platform (and the value you're getting from each) is a worthwhile exercise.

- dp