With over 2.46 billion users, social media is taking our world by storm. Everywhere you look, you can find someone using their shiny new smartphone to look at social media.

From my 5-year-old cousins to my 74-year-old grandpa, family functions now involve a lot of “iPhone time.” We now sit around the living room checking our social media accounts, or even sending text messages to people across the room. Since when did our world become so caught up with our lives online?

According to Social Media Today, the average person will spend around five years and four months of their life on social media. Here is a short list of five things you can do with that time:

1. Graduate high school: We are all struggling now, but imagine how much time on homework you would save yourself if you just put your phone down for five minutes.
2. Get a degree in college: This could lead to a better job and more money in the future.
3. Meet the right person and get married: You could spend all this time with someone face-to-face instead of them sliding into your DM’s.
4. Play on a major league sports team: For all you athletes, you could have a career in sports with many fans making lots of money, doing something you love.
5. You could fly to Australia about 2,671 times. Imagine how much fun you could have getting on and off airplanes.

I get it, I am guilty of it too. We all get sucked into the social media trance and spending way too much time on our phones when there are much better uses of our time. But, if we just put down our phones, we would realize that there is more going on in the real world, than on our tiny screen.

So, graduate high school. Get a degree. Or even fly to Australia 2,671 times in your life. Just put down your phone and take a break from that virtual reality, because this reality is much more interesting.