Start Living In The Offline World

Did you get tagged in any photos from this weekend on Facebook? I certainly did. Did you know in advance that you would get tagged? I’m sure that most of us usually know in advance. Do you feel like social media has you connected with your friends? Where am I going with this? I like to read a wide variety of blogs. One of the blogs that I check out, College Candy usually covers fun and entertaining topics for college students. Last week I read a post about how real life happens offline.

How does this tie into money management? That’s what this post is going to be all about. The fact that there’s many benefits to being offline. There’s also many ways to connect personal finance to being offline.

1. Time wasted.

Time is money. Think of all of the time that you’ve wasted by randomly creeping through Facebook. Many of my friends from school claim that they don’t have the time to hold a part-time job. Yet they have the most complex Facebook profiles in the world and always manage to be available for chat. I won’t be a hypocrite here and tell you to get off social media because I’m a former addict myself. My favorite tip here is to try to keep track the amount of time you spend on Twitter or Facebook today. Then the next day try to spend an equivalent amount of time on doing something else. For example, if you spend an hour surfing through Twitter today, try to spend an hour on working out tomorrow (or learning how to play the guitar). You’ll be shocked when you find out how much you can get done.

2. Missed networking opportunities.

Through spending all of your time in the cyber world, you’re missing out on valuable networking experiences all around you. I’ve seen people come to class and be completely anti-social. They spend all of their free time before and after class surfing Facebook on their laptops. They don’t feel the need to communicate with their peers that are likely in very similar situation. These are people that could help you exponentially in the future. Instead all of their time is spent on “social networking.”

Don’t you find it funny how people feel so connected because of Facebook/Twitter apps on their cell phones? We can get updates by the minute on major events in life (engagements, graduations) and minor ones (what Steve had for breakfast today). We walk around staring into a small screen in public, while hundreds of people pass by us. We never speak with any of these people. Instead we stare into this tiny screen and look at pictures of others. Don’t worry because I’m guilty of this too. Most of us are. I just find it a bit funny.

3. There’s more to life.

The world is a very interesting place. There’s so much to see and do out there that we would have to live a few life times just to get half of it done. Why spend precious time on stressing about tagging all of your friends in that 24 person group photo? Have you tried picking up a new sport? Have you visited any of the places you’ve been dying to see? There’s an abundance of options for how we can spend our time.

What do you think? Did I just ramble on today or did my points make sense? Have you tried going a day without social media? I’m really considering a weekend social media/technology fast. Yes, going a full weekend without technology. Is it possible?