Focus On The Good

IT'S PAST MIDNIGHT. I’M BONE-TIRED FROM A LONG DAY AT WORK, but I can’t sleep. My eyes are glued to my mobile device, and my fingers are busy scrolling and typing, scrolling and typing…Lather, rinse, repeat.

‘Fess up. You can relate. You’re a social media junkie, and you need intervention. The signs are all there:

1. The moment you wake up, you reach for your mobile phone (conveniently placed within arm’s reach, of course) to check for notifications—new tags, new messages, new comments, new posts.

2. Not a day passes when you don’t check any of your one, two, three, four (how many do you have anyway?!) social networking accounts.

3. You get most of your news fix from links you find on Facebook or Twitter.

4. Your Facebook friends list is composed mostly of passing acquaintances, or sometimes of people whom you’ve never met but are somehow connected to you, a la Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

5. You find yourself itching to check your accounts while in the middle of a meeting, while watching a movie, and even while on a dinner date.

When browsing through actual, non-electronic reading materials, you sometimes get an urge to double-tap on something that you like on a page, or to zoom in on a photo using your thumb and forefinger.