We're all guilty of it. You pick up your phone to reply to a text message and while you're at it you check Instagram, then Facebook, then Snapchat, then Twitter, Pinterest, Tinder, Vine, and your blog. It's a never ending cycle. Soon you realize that an hour has passed by, you are still sitting in the parking lot of Walmart, and the gallon of ice cream you just bought has completely melted. It's not that social media is a bad thing- I'll be the first to tell you that I love a good Instagram creeping session, but the addiction to social media is consuming our lives, compromising our self worth, and distracting us from what's really important.

1. Time is precious, waste it wisely.

Have you ever considered what you would do if you had no technology for the day? If you check Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook four times a day, and you spend 5 minutes on each site at a time, you are spending 80 minutes on social media a day. That's over an hour that you could be doing something more productive with your time. Yet, we claim that there is not enough time in the day to go to class, take a nap, go to the library, eat, go to the gym, go to meetings and work, or do the things that we need to get done. I personally spend more than 5 minutes a day on each social media site I listed, plus Pinterest, of course. Actually putting into perspective how much time we spend on our phone looking at social media makes me wonder what we could be doing with the time that we are basically wasting.

2. Comparison is the thief of all joy.

What are you doing when you are stalking through the profile pictures of the girl sitting three seats down from you in World Lit? You are comparing yourself. "I wish that my boyfriend liked taking cute pictures like her boyfriend does," "I would be so much prettier if I had blue eyes like her." "She has way better style than me," "I want to be that tan," "I love her hair...maybe I should ombre my hair?? Nah I couldn't pull it off like her." IT'S GOT TO STOP. It would be one thing if we were truly appreciating their pictures, but I know I'm not the only one that criticizes myself and compares myself to others while creeping through social media. It's not healthy and it's ruining our self-esteem.

I'm not saying that we should all quit cold turkey and never post to social media sites again, but reducing the amount of time spent on our phones and laptops everyday would give us so much more time to focus on what's important in life (which probably is not the amount of likes you got on your post from last night).