Content Consumption is Stealing Your Time
Modern technologies and amenities have made our lives easy. We live in an era of abundance. Entertainment is available 24/7. In fact, there is a never-ending amount of content to consume. Movies, TV shows, YouTube videos, TikTok videos, Instagram reels, and so on. These examples are just scratching the surface of content that we consume to entertain ourselves.
This abundance of entertainment has significant consequences.
Falling down the content rabbit hole is a distraction. It sucks you into an infinite pipeline of content fed to you by algorithms. This pipeline sucks you further and further in. The algorithm feeds you content it thinks you’ll enjoy. And this algorithm is smart.
The software developers who design this algorithm know what they’re doing. Years of research fuel their every move. They design this algorithm to keep you on their platform. In other words, they want to get you addicted to their platform.
This content addiction is dangerous.
It steals your time
Consuming endless content is a MASSIVE time waster. You’d be surprised how “Just 5 minutes of TikToks” can easily turn into 3 hours of TikToks without you even realizing it.
Consuming content doesn’t provide value to your life. Ask yourself, “How have the TikTok dances I’ve seen this month helped me improve an area of my life?” You’ll most likely have a difficult time coming up with an answer to this question. Take a moment to reflect on this.
Most content isn’t going to enhance your life. It drains your mental energy. And it will often put you in a bad mood. Let’s just say a lot of content online uses rage bait, complaining, or unnecessary drama. These styles of content only increase your stress and hurt your mental health. Yet, these styles of content are among the most popular styles of content. Are you consuming these styles of content? If so, why are you consuming it?
To make matters worse, when you’re spending time consuming useless content, you’re taking time away from doing useful tasks in the real world. You could’ve spent this time on your work, exercising, meditating, walking, with family or friends, and so on.
Life is moving forward, while you’re standing still
Content consumption takes you away from being in the present moment. You stare at your screen full of pixels. Meanwhile, life is happening all around you. Birds chirping, trees rustling in the wind, traffic hustling and bustling, etc.
On a deeper level, life is moving forward while you’re stuck staring at your phone. People are making money, earning promotions, getting married, starting businesses, and so on. All while you’re wasting your free time watching content created by people who’ve never met nor cared about you.
Wrapping up
This isn’t to say that all content consumption is bad. But it is dangerous if you don’t monitor it. Only consume content after completing your daily work, tasks, and habits. If you consume content before these things are done, then you’ll have a high chance of procrastinating on these important things.
Be careful when consuming content.
Pay attention to what truly matters in your life. Your REAL life. Not the pixels you see on your screen.
You’ll notice your life feeling more meaningful. And you’ll feel calmer and happier too.