Social media have gained so much growth in the last two decades. Almost everyone is bound to an application, without which the day never ends. We wake up checking the phone and fail to fall asleep viewing everyone’s post of the day. Unknowingly, we invest more time on social media. Unlocking the phone for every 30 seconds is a recent disorder of many users.
All social media apps are designed to gain our attention and time again and again. Alert of incoming messages pulls us to respond instantly. It distracts us and creates mood swings. At a broader view, most of this application support professional networking, marketing and in maintaining relationships, in some way they affect our productivity and mental health too.
Staying connected is what the world needs today. Either it is for business or for personal life, timely response matters more. Most of us rely on communication apps to engage with millions of people every day. They made conversations simpler and easier.
WhatsApp is the most popular and highly used personal communication platform, unlike any other applications. There are 1 billion daily active WhatsApp users. On an average, people who use this app often open it for every 40 minutes. It’s a Boon for communication and as well as Bane for productivity and mental health. Below are the reasons that TOO much of WhatsApp is bad for your productivity and mental health.
1. Instant Response
WhatsApp is basically a private communication tool. Whenever the notification pings, the hand automatically reaches the phone, no matter how busy you are. This seems distracting. Often checking your phone can affect your productivity and concentration at work.
WhatsApp has some smart features which help ease communication among users. ‘Blue Ticks’ is one of them. It confirms that the message was read by the receiver. Several thoughts like over-thinking, misunderstanding happens when the double tick turns blue and no response is received from the other end. This leads to a waste of time and mental pressure.
3. False forward:
How many times have you received the same forward? How many times have you received a message asking you to pingback to your friends for something good to happen in the next 10mins or 3 days? Don’t know really, breaking such a chain matters more? Using a communication platform to forward false hopes and believes and useless messages are affecting many users mentally and is a waste of time.
Again, this is something related to forwards. Group chats are used for communicating messages to reach a group of people.
Nowadays, WhatsApp groups have become more of a place to forward jokes and uninformative matters. Quality time on groups is null now. Overloaded messages and repeated notifications are treasures of pressure, better to be on mute for most of the days.
5. Working at WhatsApp:
Using WhatsApp for business conversations has already gained ground. Exchanging information, important messages, files and others help in building customer relationships. It has been observed that a lot of workers use WhatsApp during working hours.
Working using WhatsApp is overtake by working at WhatsApp. More often to check and respond to business chats holding personal messages aside is unfair for any user. This reduces productivity at the workplace. It is for this reason that some companies do not allow any form of communication via personal phones during working hours.
5 ways for better productivity:
- Limit the number of groups
- Mute groups which are not really helpful
- Block separate time for usage
- Ignore unwanted forwards
- Maintain separate WhatsApp account for business activities
Technology is made for a quick assessment and to secure time. Whenever the usage of technology exceeds the threshold, it gets converted into addiction. So, addiction to anything will make mental sufferings.
It’s always better to know the limit to use all technology, if not it may create many barriers to our professional and as well as personal life.
It is easy to get lost in the phone. Staying away all the time is not the exact solution. You must understand why you are on those apps. Make sure you have only relevant applications on your phone with boundaries set and learn to live with it.
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