Teenage Wasteland – The Who
The “average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook”
That’s more than 334 hours on a year, which is 14 days of life per person spent on Facebook each year. 2 weeks of life on Facebook a year. That is a lot of time.
I understand some of this time is spent at work or in class but still, people waste a lot of their free time on Facebook.
Let’s figure out how we are spending so much time with virtual friends.
First off, I often open up Mozilla and sign into Facebook without realizing it. Within a blink I’m logged into the same calming blue all social networking sites have. I wonder, “how the hell did I just login without clicking? Oh, it’s subconscious now, sweet.”
Once I login I see all the pointless stuff my friends have on their minds. “Cold Oatmeal sucks ASS!” says Fred. I think, “wow, really should delete Fred for the stupid comment, but for some reason I like reading random stuff like this.”
Then there are those days where we wasted way too much time on Facebook. We had a little free time during the day, so we decided to just check the Facebook real fast with no intention to stay on for more than a minute. Thirty minutes later, we wake up from our vegged out “surfing profiles” state of mind and realize we just spent half an hour looking at Betty’s entire “Karaoke Keggar!” album. It’s especially embarrassing since every picture has the girls posed with the same fake album smile, and you don’t even know any of the people.
There’s a term for wasting time on social networking sites: Social Masturbation (I’ve also heard Faceturbation from my friend Graeme, which is good too). Social networking sites help us fill a need to be social, when really it’s all just virtual. Our minds are tricked into thinking we have the company of people when really it’s just a screen and pixels. Profiles and pictures stimulate our social senses without actually having to hang out with friends.
I’ll be the first to admit to a bad social masturbating habit, but I’m working to change that. If you see me signed on tell me to sign the fuck off and chill with people in real life. Nothing’s better than actually getting together with friends and just kicking it. In real life, there’s no need for wall posts and comments. In real life, there’s no need to judge someone on the wittiness or their profile.
What’s tricky though is that it’s not always easy to hang out sometimes. Maybe we all login to social networking sites because we’re too lazy to figure out what everyone’s up to. We could text some friends and make a few calls, but sometimes we’re just too lazy to make the effort. It’s a waste of time when we text a few friends and none of them can chill. We put out the effort, but sometimes it’s just too inefficient. This is when we sign on and veg out to a session of social masturbation.
Enter Weutt. Coming soon.
Stuff. 