It’s addictive

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snap Chat…they are corporations, whose goal is to make money for their stakeholders.

It’s no surprise then that they work super hard to make their platforms addictive for users so that the more time they spend their the more adverts and other business opportunities they can serve up.

The questions as the user is, does this serve me well? Is this adding value to my life? What else could I do with the time that I spend here? What difference would this make to my life if this didn’t exist? Will this affect my self-worth, self-confidence, mental health? The list of questions could go on.

We often forget to ask questions about value anymore as we have fallen into the ‘any benefit’ trap. One single benefit is often enough, where previously humans, with more limited resources, we had to evaluate much more.

The addictive nature of social media leads to less evaluation and more time lost with the only gains to be had for the owners of the platform.

Our planet

7 billion + of us inhabit this rock.

At what point will we learn that we are merely passengers here, we do not own it, it is not ours and if we do not look after it or ourselves as a human race, we won’t be here forever, or for much longer.

We can all make a difference, even if we consume less, clear some rubbish, recycle old stuff, eat less food, chuck out less stuff, look after nature and so on. If each and every one of us did something small for the world each day, that would be 7 billion positive steps towards a better world.

Think that’s fluffy thinking and too tree hugging? Well, we can remind ourselves in the not too distant future what ignoring our planet led too as there will be very few trees to hug.