If you just want to “waste” time online because you’ve nothing else to do, be careful that you don’t get triggered by some post that you happen to disagree with.
Using Twitter aimlessly is similar to walking around aimlessly somewhere while analyzing if someone is saying something you like or dislike.
The focus is on other people and other people’s posts.
This is a quick recipe for “entering the trance of social media”.
You see a post, you decide that you’re going to feel offended by it, and you react as a result.
The thing is you have no idea what is going on with that person who posted.
You don’t know if they are even real, if they’re hiding behind some false pseudonym or if they’re trolling.
Maybe the person had a miserable day and needed to throw a dart at someone to alleviate some of their stress.
Unfortunately, you allowed for the dart to hurt you.
I’m not saying that it is always like this, but you just don’t know what the intention is of that person who posted that tweet.
So when you “look around” on Twitter and you’re triggered by a post, you can lose track of time because of that engagement that you couldn’t resist.
That’s how you can spend an hour instead of 5 minutes on Twitter.
I purposely mention Twitter because it is on Twitter where we see a large number of posts (tweets) in a short time span.
This is the reason why you want to have a purpose when you go on Twitter.
What is it that you want to do there? What is it that you want to see?
If the purpose is to post, then post and get out of there.
If the purpose is to check a specific hashtag to find posts to engage with for branding purposes for 30 minutes, then do just that and then get out of Twitter.
Having a purpose makes it easier to remain mindful while you’re on the platform.
You know what you want to do and doing something else makes you aware that you’re going off course.
So don’t go find a purpose on Twitter, but have one before you start engaging.