V.com weekend vote: Do you spend more time practicing, or doing e-mail/social media?
It's hard to believe that, at the beginning of my own lifetime, e-mail did not exist, nor did social media. Because it sure takes up a lot of time now!
I've been thinking a lot about the time drain caused e-mail and social media - and whether that time drain exceeds the time that I get to practice or play my violin on a given day.
As someone who runs a website, I have to admit that probably my online time exceeds my practice and violin-playing time on many days!
And of course, if your work forces you online, that is one thing. But I would say that a lot of my time online is wasted time - scrolling through social media, deleting junk mail, etc. Certainly there were drains on my time, pre-Internet - but none of them feels quite so useless as accidentally spending 25 minutes running in mental circles on a social media site, to no good end.
I'd much rather be practicing, and playing my violin, or doing anything out in the real world!
I thought it would be interesting for us to think about time spent on the Internet for e-mail and social media (and you can give yourself a little break for time you are forced to spend at work, on the Internet) vs. time we get to spend practicing and playing the violin. Please participate in the vote and then share your thoughts. How do you control your online time, or is it pretty out-of-control? And do you feel you have enough time to practice and play your instrument?
Thank you to Susanna Klein for inspiring this weekend vote idea. If you have an idea for the weekend vote, please e-mail editor Laurie Niles!
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Replies
Lots of other things, including watching TV. It makes me wonder which is worse? Online social addiction or solipsism?
More time practicing. My social media interactions are limited - even here on V.com - mainly for lack of time. Weekend Vote and a few other blogs are all I can reply to now. I scan the Discussion Board for subjects that interest me but am not, at present, writing to it.
Re the above-mentioned FB (Facebook): No interactions there. All I have time for is uploading adapted versions of my WordPress blog posts, and I haven’t done any of this since 2020. Ditto for LinkedIn.
I play YouTube videos a lot - music, fitness, weather, how-to, politics - mostly following audio only while doing other things in other rooms - or when adverse weather forces me to take a walk indoors instead of around the neighborhood. I vote up the ones I like - and occasionally vote some down. I’m not offering comments now, though I used to, and seldom read other YouTubers’ comments. Quite a few authors don’t bother to spell-check or proofread. Whether they do or not, a lot of them come off sounding like the modern-day version of Denny Dimwit.
I spend more time practicing because I don’t have any social media apps other than YouTube. I also have a time limit on YouTube for 30 minutes a day so I don’t really use it that much. However, when I am free, I practice up to 2 hours a day.
Luckily I've never been a telly addict. I switch it on at about 6pm at the earliest when I start preparing food, and nowadays it's 90% dvd watching. Small mercy, though - I have noted that the Internet is like channel-hopping but 1000 times worse.
I limit email and social media to library online sessions to stop it taking over, besides I don't like reading the constant stream of rejections for jobs and so on at home....
Maybe I shouldn't have counted email for work.
I’m a YouTube addict. I’ve learned a lot of fiddle tricks there. If I spent as much time practicing, my back would be a total wreck.
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March 30, 2025 at 08:28 PM · I spent most of the day before a lesson once watching tiktok reels on FB, so I permanently deleted my FB account.