Smart Phones, Dumb People

From the BehaviourWorks website - BehaviourWorks Australia is a leading behaviour change research enterprise within the Monash Sustainable Development Institute at Monash University. We bring leading behaviour change researchers and practitioners together to find behavioural solutions to social, environmental and organisational problems.

The only app I use on my phone is instagram. I use a browser for everything else. I don't use push notifications at all and I have been using third party apps to track my social media use and schedule posts for years. When I first started monitoring, my usage was around 30mins for fb on a heavy day and around 10 mins for instagram (I didn't really use it much then). For the last couple of years it floats around 10-15 mins a day for fb and about the same for instagram depending on messages. Of course, I have days when I blow it out but I certainly notice it when I do and will do my best to balance that for the rest of the week. It is difficult for those of us who use social media for work or promotion purposes but you would be surprised how beneficial scheduled posts can be to maintain a presents and the arms length distance can make all the difference to your sanity. I encourage everyone to turn off push for all apps and even if it is just for a week, install a monitor. Estimate how much you think you use social media then check to see how close you are. It's interesting how far off our biases can be.

The complete six part video series of Smart Phones, Dumb People is below. You can find more from BehaviourWorks here.