Social Media: Time Waster or Social Enhancer?

In the past couple of years, social media has exploded.  There was some movement in this direction with things like easily accessible blogs, LiveJournal and others.  But with platforms like Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest and others, social media is much more important in the lives of every day folks than it was even 5 years ago.  The impulse for many folks is to denounce these platforms as taking away from the “real” world and wasting everyone’s time.  Other folks argue that people were pretty adept at wasting time before Facebook was ever invented and that it is a great way to share and interact with other people. 

I’m torn.  I suspect that both camps are correct in some respect.  I’ve been trying to find ways to maximize the gain from these platforms, especially Facebook, while reducing the amount of time and energy wasted.  A few things I have done that seem to help: 

1) I stopped playing any of the games.  Most of the games (especially from Xynga) are only games in the loosest sense of the word…sort of like “War” is a card game.  They don’t require any real skill, nor even luck, but instead constantly sitting in front of the computer sending out requests and pestering all your friends.  I’m sure I annoyed some people before I stopped playing them.  I AM SORRY.  As an aside, another reason to stop playing is that these games and apps are notoriously full of viruses. 

2) While I do post a lot (probably more than I should) I typically try to repost bits that I think are truly informative or interesting.  I (mostly) avoid music videos, memes and the like.  I also don’t have my Spotify or Pinterest accounts linked to share my moves on other sites.  I also don’t link FB to my moves in other places.  I will admit that this is as much to protect my privacy and to avoid annoying others as it is to keep from wasting more time than is absolutely necessary.  But it’s a start.

I will admit that I spend much more time on social networking than I should.  I can’t imagine that on my deathbed I will regret reading to my kids instead of updating my status.  But I also very much enjoy the things I learn from social media.  I just need to keep finding a way of striking the best balance between finding and sharing useful information, and piddling away my time.  I’m not there yet.