How much is "too much"?

Aug 14, 2021

Heyy! How have you been? I am writing this newsletter from a really chilly climate having a hot cup of coffee alongside. Is I am the only one whose feeling June and July went really fast. Like that fast!

This week I have been excessively consumed upon social media. When I have started learning the ways to reduce it everyone had their own opinion on how to reduce/avoid using social media. I just typed social media on Youtube and mostly all the content in the first page tells that social media causes Mental health problems. This made me to find out how much time on social media exactly is healthy and while researching this I have learnt a lot.

I stumbled on old reports that stated that 30 mins/ day is healthy to spend on social media. Okay, that is even not enough to buffer instagram stories or load a Youtube video.
From 2020, our dependence on internet for our daily life purposes has increased substantially. The only option of entertainment/information on the pandemic was/is social media.
Every blog I stumbled upon, every Medium post I read stated one way or other that excessive use of Social media can cause anxiety or depression. But how?
Toxic positivity is another term that I came across a lot. It made sense for me on some platforms. Linkedin is an app that I use and used to check like 3 times a week.
Since Linkedin is a place where people update their professional achievements and there were a lot of people, I felt like everybody was doing good. Every post was positive so that nothing was relatable to my state of mind. This is how I understood Toxic positivity.
From 2020, I have read lots of news if that wasn’t for social media, I would never know that would have happened.

Now, back to the question, How much time is healthy?

I guess, that is up to you. No one can tell where/how/why you feel intimidated from social media. This intimidation varies on geography, on age, on time, on education etc. Everybody is far away from their friends and family. Being this long at one closed space, is totally exhausting for many people. During this it is cruel to set a limit that has no evidence (or upgrade) for recent times for social media and call it “Healthy”. If people are mindful about using it and they genuinely want/don’t want to use it, it’s completely up to them.

What do you think about this grey area? Reply to this mail with your views. I would love to read.