Two Hours of Social Media a Day Will Take up Years of Your Life

Some advice to avoid regretting this

The current life expectancy of a male living in the UK is 79.2. For females, it is 82.9. This means if you’re an average 24-year-old male, and spend 2 hours on social media every day, you are on track to spend 4.6 of your expected 55.2 remaining years using social media.

This is terrifying!

Now consider the number 1 regret of people on their death bed:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This is from a generation of people that grew up without a smartphone. They didn’t have the luxury of comparing themselves to strangers around the globe, and they certainly didn’t have to live with the anxiety of how their own lives appear to strangers around the globe either.

Yet, despite not having any of those extra pressures we have today, their number 1 regret was not living a life truer to themselves.

Now imagine if these people grew up with a Facebook account.

For the generations before us, the regret usually comes from dedicating too much of their life to a job they didn’t like, or from working too hard to earn money to buy things they didn’t want to please people they didn’t care about.

The problem with our generation is that we still waste time doing all of those things, with social media bundled on top. Over 2 hours per day on average.

If we fast-forward to a point where those of us growing up in the smartphone era reach the end of our lives, how do we think those regrets are going to look? What would we give for an extra 7 years on this planet?

This is getting a bit dark and I apologise for purposely exaggerating to make my point, but I think this is something we should all consider:

How much of our lives are we happy to dedicate to social media?

I am not anti-social media. But I am pro-conscious usage of social media, and it’s important at this point to add the number 4 biggest regret of people on their deathbed:

I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Social media is undoubtedly a wonderful tool for connecting with friends and family, and it’s usually the reason why people say they cannot live without it.

However, it’s important to dig deep to really understand how much of your social media screentime is actually helping you stay in touch with friends. I’d bet it is a lot lower than you think — and because social media isn’t really a replacement for human contact, I could even go as far as suggesting it could be hindering your relationships as well.

For example, how meaningful is it to drop a quick like on a cousins new baby pic? It’s not a patch on giving them a call to see how they are coping as a new parent, or even visiting if you can.

Again, I’m not completely anti-social media, but I think these are things we should all consider now — so we don’t regret them later on.

My recommendation would be to take a month-long social media detox, where you avoid all temptation to check your feeds (it’s easier than you might think).

After that, I recommend re-introducing the apps you think can bring value to your life but with more conscious usage. I highly doubt you will ever regret using Instagram to organise a drink with an old friend, but you may well regret aimlessly scrolling for hours on end whilst the world passes you by.