How social media silently steals your life

LOOK down at your phone. How many times have you checked it today? Twice? Five times? Twenty? If you’re like most people, you probably lost count. But here’s a real small device in your hand. Your constant companion, is quietly consuming hours of your life every single day.

- SANJITH HANNUMAN

In South Africa alone, the average person spends a staggering three hours and 44 minutes daily scrolling through social media feeds. That’s over 56 days per year, nearly two full months of your life spent staring at a screen rather than sieze-ing with the world around you.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

From productitivity to procrastination: the workplace drain

Remember that urgent project you needed to finish? The one where you found yourself innocently checking LinkedIn “just for a minute” only to emerge 45 minutes later with nothing accomplished? That’s no accident.

Social media platforms are meticulously designed to transform productive professionals into distracted scrollers. The cost isn’t just personal; it’s financial.

Companies lose approximately 9.5% of productivity to “non-workrelated social media usage,” translating to billions in wasted resources annually. Even as you read this, how many notifications have pulled at your attention? How many times have you felt that irresistible urge to check what’s happening online?

TikTok brain”: the academic achievement killer

Consider the impact is even more profound. That feeling when you can’t study or focus? Suddenly find yourself dead at a TikTok video? It’s now got a name: “TikTok Brain”. Characterised by shortened attention spans, reduced focus and increasing anxiety.

What was once a mind capable of deep focus and critical thinking is systematically being rewired for constant stimulation and instant gratification.

As one university professor noted: “I’ve watched attention spans collapse in real-time over the past five years. Students who could once engage with complex ideas for hours now struggle to focus for even 10 minutes without reaching for their phones.”

The executive exception? think again