Don’t Take a Break From Social Media. Manage It.
As someone who recently checked my phone 1,000 times in a week, I’m finally learning how
A couple weeks ago, as I stared vacantly into my phone, my wife offered a gentle observation about the amount of social media I’d been consuming. Her kind implication: I was spending too much time on Facebook.
“Honey,” I replied, “it’s no big deal — I’m just checking to see if anybody outside of our house remembers that I’m still alive.”
She sighed, patted me on the head, then walked into the other room.
Alone with my thoughts and my mobile lifeline to the rest of the planet, I tried to assure myself I was only joking. But my words contained an ugly and undeniable truth: Even as I’m quarantining with my wife and two kids, the people I love most, I am starving for human connection.The numbers supported her observation. According to Apple’s Screen Time, I had picked up my phone almost one thousand times the previous week.
Look, I’m all for cutting ourselves a break during quarantine, but this is not the behavior of someone practicing self-kindness…
