Gail is concerned about the insidious nature of social media and its impact upon her.

Hi, it’s Gail and today it’s Wednesday and it’s a beautifully sunny day but it’s so windy and I’m sat here early morning, it’s about seven o’clock-ish and I’m just making some notes about what I’m going to write about on my blog later today and I’m going to blog about Social Media and how addictive – and in these strange times that we’re in with the lockdown and the different Tiers that we’re supposed to be in and the dark nights and the wet, dismal days, I’ve been finding myself entering the world of Social Media more and more, which means more screen time for me, which leads to my headaches and fatigue and feeling nauseous.

And I began to think – I know we all want to feel connected to people and I know it’s the iPads and the phones and it’s our lifelines of connecting with other people – but it does lead to more screen time and I think that this is a problem with my mood and also my sleep disturbance and I think it could be a lot to do with it.

And I’ve always remembered, my Mum and Dad always used to say to me, “If you sit in front of that TV, you will get square eyes, because you sit there all day,” and I remembered that this morning and I was sort of laughing to myself and thinking I’m sat even longer really in front of this square device of a computer screen or a TV screen or my phone or my iPad and it’s so easy to just fall into that Social Media trap of checking people’s stories and the links that they lead you onto, so you sit and watch these links and videos, which leads to more screen time.

And even writing my Blog, it’s screen time and I bet if you actually add up how many hours a day we actually pick up and use our devices, you would be shocked and I’ve come to the conclusion that I really need to change my screen time habits, as I looked on my phone and I was averaging, just on my phone alone, four hours and nineteen minutes a day and one hour four minutes – sorry, no, it was four hours nineteen minutes on my iPad a day and one hour four minutes on my phone a day – which is a ridiculous amount of time spent staring at a screen, so it’s no wonder that I’m suffering from fatigue and headaches.

So, now I’ve put my iPad down and I’m going to go for a walk and I’m going to go and sit by the sea – even though it’s windy and it’s very blustery out there, it’s fine and it’s dry – and I’m going to get wrapped up and me and Toby are just going to sit and listen to the crashing waves as they curl around Mary’s Shell.

So thank you all for listening and I hope you’re having a lovely day.
Thank you. Bye!