This is a continuation of Unhealthy Use of Social Media and its negative implications. Click here to read the previous part of this article. Let’s dive right in.
5- Information about your family/personal life: did you know you can put your family also at risk by posting on your own social media? Yes, you can! However, it really depends on what you post, how often, how personal, and how much information you post. It is also possible to identify non-family members closest to you just from your pictures, captions, tags, comments, etc. we appreciate that you want to celebrate your loved ones publicly or show your fun life, so all we can tell you about this is be minimal with your captions and pictures. Make sure you are not revealing too much or giving too much information in your comments, pictures, and captions. Pictures posted online can also be put together sometimes to efficiently plan an attack because the whole environment and house blueprint have been acquired from the pictures and videos posted online. The places you go or pass through frequently could also be pieced together. The people you hang out with the most can also be pieced together.
Avoid posting pictures of your home entrance, pictures of you in your school uniform, pictures showing your school or work ID card, pictures showing info inside your passport. Also, if possible, avoid: tagging your family members in pictures (except you are all public figures).
6- Mind programming and Easy Broadcast of False information: social media has made spreading false information easier and quicker. It is so dangerous at the moment that we tend to believe information and views on social media over actual news channels. Many people do not watch TV anymore. Many people turn to social media for most of the updates they need and have. This makes it easy to manipulate people’s views on certain matters as social media is usually an excerpt of the whole story (not always but more often than not). Social media can also be used to influence important decisions such as who you vote for, the school you go to, brands or stores you decide to buy items from, etc. It takes a whole lot of courage to move against the tide or what is perceived as the right direction because the majority is flowing in that direction. Why not dare to be different and be your own man, why not be your own woman, why not be your own voice, why not take your own stand (of course when you are convinced inside you that you are being true to yourself and standing for what is right). Bear in mind; “everyone is doing it” does not make it right!
7- You might be chatting to a predator: it is getting more difficult to guess the age of a person just by looking at them. What do we then resort to? The now popular question of “how old are you?”. The other option we have is posting on our snap saying things like “if you are younger than 16, unadd me now” or “if you are above 18, unadd me now” but how do you know who is really above 18 or younger than 16 among the people who are left, or among the people you are chatting to, or even people we send streaks?
For the young ladies and men here, you might be chatting to a predator who takes advantage or abuses younger people. For the mature ladies and men here, you might be chatting to an underage even though he/she has claimed they are above 16 (in the UK) or 18 (in most other parts of the world). This either puts you at risk of going to jail as an adult (even though it was unintentional) or puts you at risk of being abused as a weaker younger person.
8- Lowered productivity and Poor level of Concentration on important tasks: The easy flicking through stories, posts, pics, and videos also make it easy for time to pass without us noticing and we neglect important tasks in the process. Most of these posts are about a minute long and our brains are switching from one to another without really concentrating on one thing or topic for long. Most of the time, the posts on our feed are not related to each other and would most likely require our brains to differently process the new information. This is a form of multitasking that reduces our productivity by 40% (Verywell Mind, 2020), and this also makes us feel tired quicker. Sometimes we wonder why we feel so tired without having done much yet or why we suddenly feel unmotivated to do work and just want to go home to rest? It may be due to excessive use of Social Media.
We are not saying do not use social media but you can use features like Screen time to track how much time you spend on Social Media. You can set alarms of 10 minutes to track the time you spend on socials; you can have a fixed break time to check your socials every day but you need to ensure you don’t spend more than the time you have allocated! We believe adopting, and sticking to any of the techniques mentioned here would put you on a path to a healthier use of social media. Any other suggestions? Please share in the comments section.
Cited Sources
Cherry, K., 2020. The Cognitive and Productive Costs of Multitasking. [online] Verywell Mind. Available at: <https://www.verywellmind.com/multitasking-2795003>
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