It takes discipline not to let social media steal your time.

The reason people need advice on using social media is that they're a much more complex and nuanced way to communicate than a conversation or email.

Love making jewelry? Awesome! Find blogs that inspire you, follow people on social media who have great taste, start an Etsy store, and borrow a friend's DSLR to take some beautiful photos of your craft. All of this costs $0.

Being effective at social media, whether for business or personal use, means capturing people who have short attention spans. They're only a click away from a picture of a funny cat, so you have to make your thing more compelling than that cat. And that can be a high bar.

What social-media really becomes after years of use is a constant stream of information both verbal and visual that at first drenches the mind, quenching its thirst for knowledge, and subduing its curiosity slowly but surly transforms into a torrent that renders the brain heavy and the mind restless.

The information you get from social media is not a substitute for academic discipline at all.