Let me be up front from the outset, this isn’t a HAM Radio related article but, something that probably affects 99% of people today.
I’ve recently given up using social media. Like many of you reading this I had Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc etc installed and active on all of my devices. Throughout the day and night my iPhone and iPad would be constantly notifying me of posts in the HAM Radio/Motorcycle/Adventure groups I was linked into, or that Jonny/Karen had posted something that I may be interested in, even though 99.99% of the time I wasn’t interested at all.
Even switching off notifications these apps still found ways to continually pester me, so annoying!
Then there was the toxicity, I was genuinely shocked at the constant barrage of hate and anger in the HAM Radio groups. If someone posted something about a radio/antenna/device and others disagreed there was this immediate attack and following argument that went on for days. These nearly always ended up with personal insults and hatred, whatever happened to respecting others opinions?
The HAM Radio groups weren’t the only ones either, the motorcycle groups were just as bad as were the adventure groups, social media really does bring out the worst in people.
Would we all really speak to each other in the same manner face-to-face? I doubt it!
So I deleted all my social media accounts and deleted the apps from all my devices and this is where something very positive happened.
Apart from the fact that my devices were no longer hounding me 24hrs a day, the batteries in my devices were lasting considerably longer.
With the social media apps installed my iPhone battery would barely last a day however, after deleting the apps I was amazed to find that after the next full charge my iPhone battery now lasted 2.5 days without a charge!
Even though I had my iPhone set not to allow the social media apps to update in the background and switched off notifications they were still consuming massive amounts of energy from the battery of the device even when the apps had been closed and were not being used.
Clearly the social media apps are busy skimming data in the background constantly collecting GPS information, movement, app usage etc etc building up a profile for targeted advertising. This data skimming is using considerable amounts of energy from the battery and it has to be questioned if this is reducing the life of device batteries overall.
I found the same on my iPad Pro too, battery life is now considerably longer, not quite as long as my iPhone but, it too is now lasting two days on a single charge even though I use it daily.
So, apart from no longer being exposed to the toxicity of social media, my device batteries are now lasting some 2 to 2.5 times longer allowing me to consume the content that interests me for longer rather than the batteries being discharged by the constant, silent collection of data for social media companies to sell on to advertisers.
If you are an avid social media user then perhaps now is a good time to consider deleting the apps from your devices and instead start using the website interface for each platform, this way you can still get your daily fix of targeted adverts but, without the constant drain on your battery.
Normal content will resume soon …..