My Black Holes

There are 24 hours in a day, which is more than enough to complete our chores, work and also have some time to relax and do other things. But we sometimes wonder, where does all this time go? Time is not enough? What we don't notice is that we all have black holes, which suck up most of our time, but we don’t regret it. It could be Books, the internet, TV or socializing, we spend most of our time doing these things and most of the time we get carried away.

The black holes that suck up most of my free time are books and the internet. The internet is very broad and has no boundaries, one webpage links to another and soon you end up reading about celebrities and weight loss, even though you opened the internet browser to do some research for school work. “It’s like the Wild West, the internet. There are no rules.” is said by Steven Wright, referring to the lack of boundaries and rules on the internet. 

The internet also fills our brains with lies, as it is said by John Lydon that ‘I have one major problem with the internet: It’s full of liars” But we don’t regret ‘wasting’ our time on the internet, because it helps us take our mind off work for a while.

Nowadays, many people don’t buy hard copies of books; they download the soft copies, buy them or read them online.

 The other thing that takes up my time is reading story books. Sometimes while taking breaks from studying, I read. I tell myself, I’ll only read for 15 – 20 minutes, then go back to studying, but the books are so interesting that I don’t feel like stopping and I end up reading for almost an hour. Other times I fall asleep while reading and my study time is spent sleeping, this spoils my sleep pattern and I sleep very late at night. Which affects me in the morning and I can’t wake up on time, so I get delayed for school.

Reading also helps in improving our vocabulary, but excessive reading is not good for the eyes, because we are straining them. Some fictional books are not very good for the brain as they talk about things that are not true and things that don’t exist for example talking animals, magicians and demons.

Social networks are a black hole for most teenagers around the world; they spend more than 2 hours of their free time on different networks such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp, Kik and many more. Scrolling down the page and liking or commenting on people’s photos and statuses on Facebook and Instagram, doesn’t really benefit us in any way, it only takes up our precious time. Chatting to friends all day long, sometimes during class hours. We meet them in school five days a week, for others even in the weekend! 

These networks help us socialize and keep in touch with long lost friends who live far away and also make new friends. Talking to a person on a social network turns out to be easier that talking face - to - face. We often get carried away and don’t notice the time flying past. Soon it’s time for assessments and exams, we make a million promises to ourselves and our parents that we will not open or sign in, but in the end, we can’t stay away from them and end up spending more than a quarter of our study time on these.

We have to be able to set time limits for our black holes and be

 able to follow them, and not get carried away or too addicted.