Are you wasting hours a day on the ’Gram?

IT’S HARD TO imagine LBI (life before Instagram) isn’t it? When we could go to the loo without taking our phones for a mid-pee scroll, when filters belonged to coffee machines and we would actually cook poached eggs without taking pictures of them. I would hazard a guess that most Grazia readers are in some way addicted to social media. I know that I am – I no longer do Facebook or Twitter but I doubt two hours goes past when I’m not lured in. For some of my friends, it’s the last thing they look at as their head hits the pillow and the first thing before they open the curtains.

According to the Global Web Index, the average user spends two hours and 24 minutes per day on social media in 2020, and it’s got worse in lockdown. With only our four walls to entertain us, it’s been hard not to get sucked into the vortex.

While there are many positives on social media – Black Lives Matter, for example – I am always shocked by my screentime report, and I’ve started to wonder what I could do with that time that was more useful. In two months, I could write that children’s book. In one, I could finish that mural on my daughter’s wall that I started two years ago and still haven’t finished.

I asked Alister Gray, an executive coach and founder of mindfultalent.co.uk, for help. ‘Social media acts like an anaesthetic for our minds. It’s also attractive because it takes very little effort and you feel it gives you respite from life. The challenge, however, is that, once you’re in, it’s very addictive and compelling. It also amplifies the fear-based negativity in the world.’ Social media draws our attention to others’ lives, and amplifies our own ‘lack of ’ which, he says, can lead to self-doubt, FOMO and a spiralling mind, especially if you’re fearful anyway right now.

So what to do? First, we need to take back control. Gray says if you do nothing else, stay off all tech for the first two hours of every day. He says there is much research to show that this vastly improves mental and emotional wellbeing. ‘You are proactively starting the day (rather than reactively doing so), building better real-life connections and you are consuming way less information.’ We have on average 70,000 thoughts a day and adding in social media negativity can cause overwhelm. He also suggests switching off notifications, which are designed to pull you in. I can testify it’s a game-changer – I have barely been on Facebook since I did this. He also suggests scheduling in time every few hours for social media, as you would a workout or meeting, and focusing on your other projects in the meantime. This puts you back in charge rather than the other way around.

Finally, he says, as you go to mindlessly grab your phone, ask yourself, ‘Is this the best use of my time? Is it taking me towards my dream life?’ Write it on a Post-it on your phone if you have to. And remember that life is what happens outside of an app. @susannahtaylor_