Banning Social Media

­­­­­­­­­­­­2015 was a year where I just could not shake the thoughts about time wasting versus spending time working on my life’s mission and other spiritual goals. The concept of time has regularly popped into my mind and, if not, I was seeing articles on Breslev that would remind me – There are many ways to spend time, am I spending mine in worthwhile ways?

As I’ve written before (in the article My-Stop Doing List), it is incredible how relatively short periods of daily time – minutes – can add up to days spent by the end of the year. And those days can add up to time invested in prayer and spiritual growth or it can add up to time spent wasted in any number activities… social media being a big area of “easy” time wasting.

The draw of social media is significant personally for all of the regular reasons…errr excuses (keeping in touch with family and friends, photo sharing, easy instant messaging) and it has become overly complicated in my life because social media is now a major (MAJOR) component in many businesses and organizations. In some circles it is their only method of communication with members. Considering I work virtually and consult with several businesses and organizations who use social media as a prime marketing tool, I could not conceive of how to disconnect.

When I would read recommendations from my rabbi to remove access to social media I would assign those suggestions to people who only use it for personal reasons.  I had this label on my use of social media as “required for work” and therefore it didn’t count as a time waster.  However, this year, in an effort to start looking critically at how I spend my time, I recently realized that I haven’t been being very good at drawing the line between being logged onto Facebook (or twitter, or Instagram, or Pinterest, or LinkedIn, or or or) for legitimate work reasons vs work with a large side of “let’s just check in with so-in-so, oh look here is a cute video, wait when did she move…… wow I’ve been here an hour.”

I was stuck. I had a desire to ban social media from my life but due to work (I thought) I couldn’t. So I attempted several band aid fixes to limit my social media use to business only – I blocked all personal updates from my Facebook news feed, I deleted the apps from my phone, I changed my password – I literally had to type “gettowork” in order to log in. Nothing worked to break this chain of easy entertainment. Probably because I didn’t really want to break the chain and I wasn’t taking the “stop wasting time” messages seriously.

Recently, after much prayer about what area I should currently be working on in life, I finally realized it was time to get serious about finding where I’m wasting time in my days – and especially a way ban social media.

I decided to run a test to determine if I was truly keeping these social media accounts for legitimate business reasons or if was I lying to myself and keeping them as a way to waste time:

I deleted (again) the apps off my phone, I changed the password to a bunch of completely random letters, numbers and symbols. I wrote it down and stuck it away so now I cannot log in without that piece of paper.

Want to guess what the results of this test have been?

Since starting the test I haven’t needed to log in for work – not once – but I’ve mindlessly picked up my phone to “just check in” and pointed my computer browser to Facebook innumerable times only to get the error screen and remember “oh yeah, I’m not doing that anymore.”

Let me tell you – it’s been an enlightening test where I’ve learned just how easy it is to waste time and truly lie to myself that it was for work purposes. Thanks to Hashem, I haven’t been on social media since the start of the test – it was weird at first. I thought up all kinds of reasons as to why I needed to sign on… they were all just really excuses and I knew it so I didn’t sign on. Today I’m so thankful to be disconnected. It’s liberating and I’m much more productive.

I still have the accounts open – At least for the time being there may be legitimate work I’ll need to do on there for my clients – but I’ve learned it is not daily work or even weekly work. So the password will stay put away and, with Hashem’s help, I’ll find a way to do my work that does not include social media and the accounts can be deleted for good.

Social media is an interesting invention and, as with everything, it can be used for the good or, heaven forbid, not.  I encourage you to take a serious look at your use of it and strongly consider removing it from your life.

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Jennifer invites you to participate in a regularly held Noahide on-line study group that reviews the garden series books of Rabbi Arush. You can contact her at jenniferjwoodward@gmail.com to be added to the weekly newsletter for dates and times. Visit the blog at noahidenews.blogspot.com