How often has this happened to you…. You lock your phone, and keep it away for just a few seconds and before you even realize…. You have unlocked the phone unconsciously, opened up Facebook or Instagram and started to scroll through even though you didn’t mean to! Now you are stuck in a scroll …scroll… scroll… refresh loop.
Believe me when I say I checked my Facebook at-least 5 times while writing this article, because thats what I did, and I added this line here after I finished this article in order to tell you.
And before putting away your phone in the first place, guess what were you doing?? The same. Its quite easy to get distracted from work or study or any task at hand and go back to endless social media scrolling. Believe me when I say I checked my Facebook at-least 5 times while writing this article, because thats what I did, and I added this line here after I finished this article in order to tell you.
Constant bombardment of feeds in these platforms makes it difficult to not do it because it induces FOMO ( Fear of Missing Out ) response in us, and we keep going back to them so that we don’t miss out on anything and we also use social media as news source to stay updated with the world.
App hopping is real, where we switch to Instagram when we get bored from Facebook, then its Twitter’s turn, and again back to Facebook in case something new has come up, and the wheel goes on and on …. for hours on end. Not to mention the in-between spurst of chats on Whatsapp and/or Snapchat and/or Messenger with friends.
Researches have shown Social Media Addictions to be comparable or even stronger than cigarette, drugs or alcohol addiction with MRI scans in studies showing the same parts of the brain being stimulated in all of the addictions.
The latest data on Social Media usage shows that the average time spent on social media is 144 minutes per day (2 hrs 24 mins). Another perspective to look at this data is that it amounts to almost seven years of and average human life that gets spent on Social Media. And these numbers are just the average. Surely we’ve all experienced the addictive nature of Social Media and failed to abstain from this readily available pastime at our disposal every single second of our internet fueled lives. But where should we draw the line between a leisure activity and full blown dependency or a behavioral addiction?
Researches have shown Social Media Addictions to be comparable or even stronger than cigarette, drugs or alcohol addiction with MRI scans in studies showing the same parts of the brain being stimulated in all of the addictions.
These multi billion dollar social media platforms by design are created in a such a way that people keep coming back to it. They earn on the sheer number of eyeballs they can get on their platform. Attention sells. Advertizers pay. These are supposed to be addictive. But we ourselves are at fault for this phenomenon of Social Media Addiction as much as any substance abuser who gets addicted on cocaine.
Psychology and Physiology of Social Media Addiction.
The physiological responses of our brains to the social media setup is quite interesting. When ever we get a like or a comment on any of our posts, we get hit these notifications… Or when our phone goes “bling” or a “buzz buzz” vibration of a chat notification , our brains releases a neurochemical called dopamine. This neurological response is responsible for stimulating the reward centres of the brain.
What this basically means is, our brain is getting pleasure response that we get from eating a tasty food or having sex, or taking drugs. Hence these micro doses of Dopamine that you get from using social media is enough to get you addicted to it. This physiological / neurochemical reponse of our brain can be explained with the other aspect of this which is a socio-phychological one.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs humans are primed to seek fulfillment of initially physiological needs required for mere survival such as air water food and shelter.
Secondly, safety needs such as health, security and resources. And then Love and Belonging and Self Esteem needs. There is a innate need for humans to have social connection with others, need for friendship and intimacy. This is where Social Media comes in.
Readily available connection medium to friends and peers, and also an ability to be connected to a huge mass of other fellow human beings is one of the reasons behind the ubiquity of Social Media Platforms. As it fulfills the need for friendship, intimacy and human connection from the comfort of the couch with out even having to develop and practice social skills that we previously required.
And then the fact that somebody liked or retweeted our posts on social media gives us the sense of social/peer approval seek from which we derive self esteem. The higher the number of followers you have on social media greater the sense of status and recognition and greater the self esteem. Now that we have explored as to Why we use Social Media, next question to ask is What is it doing to us?
Time
In his book The Outliers the Malcolm Gladwell talked about the 10,000 hr rule that makes any successful person successful. Basically the rule says any person that has a mastery in his craft has to have 10,000 hrs of practice of that craft in order to be World Class at it.
The likes of Bill Gates who had 10,000 hrs of computer programming under his belt before striking gold with Microsoft or the success of Beatles could be attributed to the fact that they played their music live well above 10,000 hrs. Same goes with world class Atheletes, Artists and Musician and the like.
The likes of Bill Gates who had 10,000 hrs of computer programming under his belt before striking gold with Microsoft or the success of Beatles could be attributed to the fact that they played their music live well above 10,000 hrs. Same goes with world class Atheletes, Artists and Musician and the like.
The 10,000 hrs can be broken down into 3 hrs each day for 10 years. The same amount of hours we spend on Scrolling on social media. One can say that the time we could have used productively is being used up on social media.
Health
Any addiction is unhealthy so to speak, more so when it starts affecting your mental and physical health. Apart from the general side effects of we being unproductive and using social media as a means to waste valuable time. Its has health implications as well. Studies have show too much of social media causing anxiety and depression. Conditions like phantom vibration syndrome (fake vibrations), the sensation of feeling phones buzzing when its actually not; have been increasing.
Disruption in sleeping patterns and messed up natural Circadian rhythms due to long term exposure to screens have been known.Unrealistic lifestyle expectations and negative body image for people has also been know to adversely affect our overall well being.
To answer the question: Should we Ditch social Media?
(You really should not, because I am going to ask you to share this article immediately to your social media accounts. :p :p :p Click on the share links —>
On a serious note though…
Social Media today is so ingrained in our daily lives. We really cannot.
But we should be more aware of how much time we are spending on special media and what effects are they having on us. Anything in moderation is healthy, the same is with social media.
Besides social media has increased our capacity to connect with people 1000 fold which we can use to our advantage. The question is are we leveraging this attention machine in our favour as so many individuals and businesses are doing? Or are we just consumers of social media being consumed by this supermassive attention blackhole?
Choice is ours.
