The Dark Truth Behind Social Media Addiction

Mental control at its finest

3rd millennium, 21st century, 2021, we’re just beginning this new year, a lot has changed throughout the years, especially with how the coronavirus has affected the lives of every person around the world.

From the way we fall to sleep at night to the ways we interact with our family or friends, the way we talk, the way we spend our free time, it is not the same as 5 years ago, let alone 10 years ago.

But to be a little more thorough, let’s talk about the most preferred way to have any sort of social interaction nowadays, social media.

It’s alarming the time we spent on social media daily, even common activities such as meeting a new person are being performed mostly through social media than in person.

And I’m wired the same as any other person, I can spend all day on social media, can somebody tell me why TikTok so addictive? I can spend hours on it scrolling down.

But that’s not it.

Even though social media has been one of the most innovative business models of the new millennium, it has some major flaws.

It can wash your brain, and I don’t want to sound like a mental person, but there’s something that just feels off with society nowadays.

Let’s discuss some consequences of the continuous use of social media.

It’s affecting the normal ways of human interaction.

I mean, do you remember the last time you went out to get something to eat with your family and friends and you didn’t pick up your phone to check social media?

Let’s discuss this a little further.

Back when I was younger, and smartphones weren’t around, I remembered that I could have a normal meal with my family. We used to talk about our days and what was going on with our lives.

Nowadays is getting harden and harden every time to do this.

A study published in 2014 showed that the mere presence of a phone could lesser the quality of in-person conversation.

And that was back in 2014, 7 years later the effects have just gotten worse, we live in a society where is impossible that a person goes out without their phone.

We even have phone chargers everywhere. We have charges in the office, in the car, several spots at the house. We can’t miss anything from social media. It’s like a drug.

Social media can trigger psychological problems.

As a male in my early twenties, I can relate hard to this one, I have a lot of friends, especially female friends, that needed to uninstall their Instagram accounts because it was affecting them mentally.

Teenagers nowadays live and breathe for likes. The rapid evolution of social media has put them in a place where to be socially accepted you need to have a certain amount of followers in social media.

People can have the worst day of their life if they upload a photo and it doesn’t reach the number of likes they were expecting.

A 2016 study links the use of social media use and depression among U.S. young adults.

It states that “social media use was significantly associated with increased depression. Given the proliferation of social media, identifying the mechanisms and direction of this association is critical for informing interventions that address social media use and depression.”

A more recent one links the influence of social media on depression, anxiety, and psychological distress in adolescents.

People are no longer feeling okay in their bodies.

I considered myself a “gym rat”. I spend a lot of time at the gym and the fact that I feel okay in my skin has made me realized how many people don’t feel the same way as me.

And it made me think, where this problem came from?

Until I open my Instagram app and the first thing I saw was this girl with a stunning body on a white bikini at a nice beach.

For some people, this type of social media content can be really motivational or even inspiring for them to achieve a similar type of body. But for others, this type of post can trigger a lot of bad things.

You don’t even want to know how many times I had to tell my girlfriend to stop comparing her body to people on social media. It can be detrimental.

And this is something we can not control. Who am I, or somebody else close to you, to tell you to stop posting some type of content because it can hurt somebody?

People feel like they don’t fit in society anymore.

Have you seen the constant rise of people who undergo plastic surgery procedures?

A 2019 study shows the Influence of Social Media on the Decision to Undergo a Cosmetic Procedure.

It concludes that spending long hours on social media platforms and having negative self-views when viewing social media are associated with an increased likelihood of considering undergoing cosmetic procedures in the future.

Kids are losing their childhood.

Have you seen those movie scenes where the father is the one that has to ask their children if they want to go play catch outside because the son doesn’t want to stop playing video games all day?

Sorry to pop your bubble. That’s real-life now.

Have somebody older than you asked for your help with something related to technology?

Kids nowadays learn how to use mobile devices before even learning how to walk. It amused me seeing my nephew who’s just 2 years old browsing for videos on YouTube.

As a Software Engineer, I was completely in shock. At that moment, I understood why these big companies spend millions of dollars researching something as simple as figuring out what color they should use for a specific button.

To dig deeper, something has to be really off nowadays, because kids nowadays enjoy watching other persons playing video games instead of playing them themselves.

Twitch has been the platform that has skyrocket this market, it even made YouTube and Facebook step up their games and come up with YouTube Gaming and Facebook Gaming, respectively.

We just can’t stop comparing ourselves with others.

This is something that the more we try to control it, we just can’t stop doing.

You can pep talk yourself all day about why this is wrong and why you should not do it. You can even stop doing it when you feel with yourself, but we are emotional beings.

The moment we feel emotionally weak and we open social media, here the comparisons start again.

A study published in 2014, states that people feel depressed after spending a great deal of time on Facebook because they feel bad when comparing themselves to others.

Final Thoughts.

Although social media has closed the gap between us and people who are far away, it has increased the gap we have from those who are close to us.

It has a lot of benefits, countless I would say, and time will just keep unfolding more and more because between their many qualities is that they keep innovating to keep us entertained.

But it can be a tool that if we don’t use intelligently can be detrimental to our mental health.

I think people need to be more mindful of the time they spent on social media, of the things they share, the things they liked, and learn when it’s time to take a break from them to become a better version of themselves.

As always, stay motivated, be proud of the person you are, and keep striving to become a better version of yourself.