What A Harvard Happiness Expert Says About Social Media
Social media is a large part of most peoples lives, but it might not be the best thing for most people according to CNBC Make It.
Arthur C. Brooks is a professor at Harvard who has spent a long time studying happiness. He believes that everyone should be using social media a whole lot less if we want to improve our happiness and comfort levels.
“I’m in the public eye, and I’m doing a lot of work every single day. I have to know what’s going on, but I don’t need to read more than about half an hour a day of news,” Brooks said, “as a matter of fact, I recommend that everybody watching us, that they have a strict limit on the amount of time that they spend on social media.”
Brooks doesn’t only suggest that people limit social media use, but also claims that people should limit their own news consumption as well. He says that this type of limiting will lead to a huge improvement in a persons wellbeing.
How much time Brooks suggest that we spend per day on these things may be a lot lower then you could even imagine. He suggest that you only spend 30 minutes a day across any and all different social media platforms. Brooks also suggest that you only spend 15 minutes a day looking at anything political and only 30 minutes watching or reading any type of news at all.
Brooks says that this type of habit is best to start now. There are many people who will claim that now isn’t a time that they feel they should take in less media. In response to this he says “There’s zero evidence that the world is worse or more dangerous than it’s ever been in the past, but we have more people telling us that if we’re not outraged and sad and angry, then we’re not paying attention.”
However, he says that you shouldn’t just be completely oblivious to what’s going on in the world. Brooks just wants people to have “more emphasis on what’s going on inside our heads and inside our houses and inside our families,” in the long run.