September 28, 2008
A Sobering Thought
So my school used an internal mail system/bulletin board system which kept a log of all the time spent online using the school’s email or message boards. As of today, my total time spent on this system over the past four and a half years is 8 weeks, 1 day, 18 hours and 40 minutes. And that’s purely active time, since the system logs you out after a few minutes of inactivity.
I propose that Facebook and MySpace institute a similar mechanism, that when one logs off, it would say “You have spent x weeks, y days, etc. on Facebook.”
I think that faced with such an exorbitant number, everyone would become more mindful of the time spent online, and perhaps a bit more conscious of their usage. If one knew one spent four hours on Facebook in one day alone, perhaps one would consider making some changes. Remember reading? Painting? I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to spend a lot of time online, rather that much like watching T.V., most people are unaware of just how much time they are using.
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I’m sure that that is exactly why Facebook and MySpace do no such thing. You can track your online time yourself, however, with the Firefox add-ons MeeTimer or pageaddict.