Are You A Social Media/Internet Addict?

Do you recognize this pattern….You open Facebook. Look at your notifications. Check your private messages. Log in to Twitter. Check your replies. Send a DM. You Check your work email. Then your personal email. You see a new Twitter follower so check their profile. You send a tweet. You see a YouTube link and watch the video. You click to share it on Facebook. You have a new facebook notification and on and on it goes.

Sheep Mentality?

How many people recognize this cycle? It is happening on computers all over the world in offices, boardrooms, cafes, hotels and factories. We have so much information, so many notifications and so many services vying for our attention. All of these services are trying to increase the amount of time we spend with them, it increases their profits. Websites now have teams of usability experts who follow every click you make. They know how to get you to spend more time sharing content. They know how to get you from your inbox right to the place on the site where you are likely to hang around and share or create content. Our behavior online is being monitored in some great detail and the most of us are blissfully unaware just how we are being watched and herded around the web.

Solutions

So how to you get out of these vicious time wasting cycles? Real work can be really hard to get done when you are only a click away from the latest viral video or a story that has several hundred rewteets and is well worth reading. The only real answer is stubbornness. You need to discipline yourself and put some order on your day. By all means dip in and out when you need a break or during lunch but social media services like Facebook and twitter can consume you and leave you doing precious little real hard work, the stuff that pays the bills. Luckily it being the internet and all there are some great tools out there that can monitor what your are up to and you can slap a little bit of discipline on yourself…

The Nuclear Option

If you really can’t stop looking at all your social media profiles no matter what restrictions you place on yourself them the Leechblock Plugin for the Firefox browser could be the way forward for you. This is a productivity tool that blocks pre-selected websites and you can break it down by time, day, categories etc. So I can block myself from my personal email and my own Twitter accounts during the day. This really is the most extreme option to have to take but some people are so addicted that this might be the only way they can stop themselves. What using this tool does do at the very least is highlight just how reliant you are on those services and it will be a real shock for you when you see your access to sites blocked for the first time! You can of course just turn it off but crucially there is also an option that means you can set it so as you can’t over rule and disable the plugin! I can see computers being thrown out the window at some stage in frustration.

Summary

As with all things the best bet is a little moderation. You need to try and divide your work into manageable chunks and only flick back to all your social media sites when you have a break or need to let the brain relax for a few minutes. At least you now have an extreme big brother style tool to watch over you if you do need it.