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Is Mindfulness the Cure for Social Media? Take the 5-Minute Challenge and Find Out
It seems everyone is talking about mindfulness lately. Advocates of this ancient practice claim staying present in the moment increases happiness and well-being, and who doesn’t want a piece of that in these troubled times?
I decided to give it a try the other day at the traffic lights when I realized I was completely disconnected from the present. Instead of staring blindly at the lights waiting for them to change while my mind was elsewhere, I focused my attention on how I felt and what was happening around me in that moment. There were two people walking past on the sidewalk, and a man on a foot ladder fixing a sign just a short distance from my car.
It may not seem like much, but I wouldn’t have known these people existed if I hadn’t made the conscious decision to stop and take notice of the present. How many people do we walk past every day, how many conversations do we miss, how much of life passes us by while we’re glued to screens?
A World of Illusion
Social media, by its nature encourages people’s attention to be elsewhere. The designers admit that their goal is to monopolize as much of their users’ time as possible to increase revenue. The downside is that time spent staring at a screen is time away from lived reality…
