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Whenever you use social media, you are doing work for another company. Specifically, you are helping a social media platform train their recommendation algorithm so that they can get more money from advertisers to sell their products to you. This is pretty ironic, because a lot of use social media as "leisure time" after a long day from work and school. And yet, we just keep doing work on these platforms.

I should probably explain more about why exactly this is a bad thing. If you have a job, you are being forced by other people to do work that you don't want to do. Even if you're technically self-employed, chances are, you are looking at data to tell you what you should be doing in order to make more money. This causes you to be mentally drained after working. (Although, this mental exhaustion probably varies a lot depending on what kind of job you have. The point I'm trying to make is that there is an exhaustian which exists because of being forced to work on something). This is fine, though, because at least you get money at the end of the day.

Whenever you use social media, you are being forced to do work, except, not by other people, but rather your mind. When I've social media in the past, there have been points where I've felt in my mind, "okay, I want to stop using this for now," but something in my brain forced me to keep scrolling. That's because platforms train their reccomendation algorithms so that they are addictive as possible. So, these companies force you to keep doing work for them, not because you need money, but because your mind wants stimulation. At least you can use money to buy things to make you happy.

What's the solution here? I don't know exactly. But two things I suggest you do are (1) delete all social media you don't need and (2) for the social media you can't go without, don't rely on the algorithm. For instance, on my computer, I use the Unhook browser extension to hide all reccomended videos on YouTube. The only videos that I watch nowadays are from my Subscriptions feed or my Watch Later playlist.

I'm not going to tell you exactly what you should do for your leisure time. But whatever you do, make sure you're not just doing work for another company, because that's not relaxing at all.