The Internet is a Waste of Time

I have always been more or less addicted to the internet - and having to live without it for about a month is not something that I like. But, being offline has made me realize how much time I waste on the internet.

Note: I moved to a new house, and had to wait a month to get the connection set up.

In every sense, there was no practical difference between being online for only 1 hour a week, and being online all the time. In fact, it made me more productive to be offline - even though every single thing I do is based internet technologies.

What on earth did I spend all the remaining time on? Well...

Emails

I received well over 200 emails during the first week. Out of those only 7 of them required my attention and only one required me to act within the same day. That's a very low percentage of effectiveness.

Essentially I could open up my email program every day at - say - 2:00 PM and close it 10 minutes later - and still get as much done (if not more) than if it was open all the time.

RSS Feeds

I also received 814 feed items. Of those only 22 was about something I wanted to know more about - and only 3 of those was really interesting.

Most important thing about RSS feeds is that none of the items requires your immediate attention. I was not able get my feeds for about a week, and most astoundingly it made no real difference. In fact, checking only one time made RSS handling much faster.

Note: This makes me wonder why I have my RSS reader set to "check every 30 minutes"...

Browsing

I used to browse a lot. Often it would start because of some specific need - like fact-checking for an article - but I would easily get distracted.

Just a couple of weeks ago (before my offline period) I needed to get some information about how our brains work when things is accelerated (as part of a stress handling). During this fact-finding "mission" I stumbled over an article about how much G-force drag-racers experience, and that a drag-racer can accelerate to 100 mph in less than 1 second. Although this was completely unrelated, I was intrigued by that kind of force, and spend the next 20 minutes reading about that instead.

That is a big problem with the internet; there are too many things out there - without any barriers between different categories of information. It is too easy to get distracted and that is a serious time-waster.

Of course, much of this isn't exactly news. We all know that browsing, RSS and emails are causes of ineffectiveness. But, what I didn't know was how much ineffectiveness it accounts too.

For me more than 99% of all the time I spend handling emails and RSS is a waste. And, more than 60% of the time I spend browsing is keeping me away from more important things.

This is something that needs fixing - and fast too.

That said...

I wouldn't want live without the internet. It is truly a helpful tool - if you can ignore the many distractions.

Comments

Thomas E. Elliott - Sep. 7, 2006

There are some days I miss just having a phone on the wall and sometime ponder just dumping the computer. I have a 15 year old son so realistically it is not likely. Nowadays the house phone rings and nobody even winces, if it is anyone you knew they would be calling on the cell. Caller ID and answering machines are the landline firewall. I guess I need to find a way to just stay off the computer except for the vital uses.

Anonymous - Jan. 9, 2007

Hi,ya!

For some time now I´ve changed my view on Internet,cell phones and all these gadgets that we are supposed to be needing...

They are A huge waste of money and time...I am certain that we´d be better off with out them. From the beginning for example PC´s should ´ve been sold only to those who really need them;

like schools , firms and so on, you get the picture...

Not to some exchibitionists and freaks that we see all over the net! I honestly think that there should be directives and laws that give directions to what should be on the net and what should not.

Things were better 20 years ago....

Anonymous - Apr. 23, 2007

One could extend the analogy to the written word, perhaps literacy should be limited to those that really need it -- the clergy, scribes, schools for those scribed and firms.

As a former junkie (aka college student), I can attest to the hours that one can waste on the internet.

-- Just like finances, our time needs to be budgeted... as unlike time you can't get a loan for more time when you run out.

-M

im someone who is reseaching this topic - Jul. 18, 2007

mz = some one researching this topic and i disagree coz i rekon the internet HAS useful stuff. it is efficient and keeps u up-to-date with stuff going on. The 21st century has produed a spectacular thing, so use it!!! :] <3

Struggling to anti-hypocrite - Aug. 3, 2007

ISWIRTT (071807 posting) - Get a load of the library. Read. There are awful things happening in this world. We are spoiled; internet is an enabler.

Act - improve - care. It's not all about you.

amed - Nov. 8, 2007

and here we are doing the same thing over and over again

we seriously need to unplug ourself from the net. its like a jar of cookies. you cant take away from it unless someones takes it away from you.

ted - Jan. 9, 2008

i am someone researching about this topic too. teachers gave us this topic for us to debate and i am on the against side. so i think it is a monster but the debate will be on 11th january. so could you help me with this subject?

Adrian V - Jan. 14, 2008

The internet, what a curious piece of crap. Without it you're almost lost and with it you are definitely lost. Thank goodness for search engines. But I must say there are far too much useless and repeated information on the net and to little relevant information. Just by discarding half a billion web pages, the planet can almost exist for another 100 years or so to come.

But my question is, when do we really (need) use the internet? There must be like a need for something or information. It is like buying a new toothbrush; you don't go and buy a new toothbrush every time you stroll past a shop. So do small businesses really benefit from the internet, do us as humans really benefit, or is it just a hype till someone finds something else.

We all know the situation around email, spam - spam and some more spam. What I hate is getting the same mail or video clips from ten different people, some I don't even know. My suggestion is to make people pay for emails. If you send a mail you pay, so this will stop unnecessary emails. Then people will only send what is important and what you really need. But what do I really need? Only I will know.

James Harding - Mar. 5, 2008

You all bad mouth the internet, and yet how the hell have you all posted these comments about; the internet is a waste of time, the internet is a waste of money. Its about time you all woke up a smell the coffe, because the internet is here to stat if you like it or not!!!

Jeff - Apr. 12, 2008

Remember when things were free on the web, and you didn't have to confirm passwords and email information to look at a page or chat. I miss those days. I bet in the future you won't even be able to do anything without submitting how much money you make per year.

Marc - Jun. 21, 2008

Hear, hear. I've been giving thought to getting rid of my Internet connection at home. I, too, also waste an inordinate amount of time doing "research". And while the Net has made it easier to have so much more at our grasp I wonder, though, if we are truly grabbing a hold of anything more or that more simply slips out of our hands...

Thoughtful piece. Just don't ask me how I came across it. I was doing some more "research". :)