Imama
Social media is becoming an invisible power that has complete control over us. It means we are being trapped like someone is constantly keeping an eye on us. “We are not consuming social media, Social media is consuming us”. In today’s date, the most expensive thing is attention. Earlier you used to go out with your friends and have fun, now you give that time to mobile. A person’s attention is where they create memories. Just like when you get old, you won’t even have your memories. These trends on Twitter and Instagram reels will be the memories.
In 2023, the overall market size of social media was about 230 billion. What they did was give free social networking through their app, gave entertainment for free and gather people’s data. By collecting these data, some sites make patterns and observe your habits. The image that you post on social media using its EXIF data, your GPS coordinates are known, which camera was used, file size, date and everything.
These, like share buttons, work like trackers, which continuously give your behavior your information to social media sites. If you don’t give that to them, you are of no use to them. In that case, these social networking sites will not allow you to use them. In 2018, Facebook’s CEO said in an interview that if a user wants their data not to be used, then in that case they have to pay to use this platform. Before making an account on social media, you click yes on the terms and conditions. After that, they get eligible to take your data. That’s why terms and conditions are made in a very boring manner. Many legal terms are used in it, which requires a lawyer to understand it. It is very difficult to read by a normal person. That’s why most of the people click yes without reading it. But their platforms are very simple to use so you get stuck to it. Even though social media platforms help us to connect with our loved ones virtually yet, they also detach us from each other in real life.
Research shows that spending too much time on social media can increase feelings of sadness and loneliness. It has developed a world of unrealistic expectations in ourselves. When we scroll through our feed, we only see perfect pictures and happy moments from other’s lives. Even though we know no human being is perfect in this world. Everyone is unique in its way, but that one-sided picture hypnotized our minds that we are not ready to accept that it’s ok to have flaws and that it’s okay to make mistakes, and in accepting this, there is no shame. This can make us feel like we’re not good enough, and this causes individuals to question their relationships. This leads to a desire for their relationships to become perfect, as shown on social media.
The other issue is that instead of physical interactions and heartfelt conversations, we prefer virtual interaction. The lack of non-verbal cues, such as voice tone and body language, in online communication leads to misunderstanding. Instead of having heartfelt conversations, we might settle for quick messages or likes. This makes relationships less genuine. When people hold back their true emotions or opinions to fit in or avoid being judged especially on social media. They might post only happy or acceptable thoughts instead of sharing how they feel. This can create a gap between their true emotions and what they are shown online, making it harder for them to connect with themselves and others genuinely. It can lead to emotional isolation and strained relationships. It results in increased stress, ultimately impacting an individual’s mental well-being and overall quality of life.
Overexposure to a certain content is also a major problem.
People often see many emotional posts like sad news, stories, personal struggles or dramatic events. If someone sees this kind of content all the time, they become desensitized. They start to feel less or less affected by the situation. For example, if someone sees heartbreaking stories and see regularly others being attacked. They might stop feeling sad about them even if they would have felt upset before. This can lead to a lack of emotional response, making it harder to connect with their feelings or be empathetic towards real life. As we all know social media use algorithms to decide what you see. This means you will mostly see opinions that you already agree with. And it can lead to limited exposure as you’re not seeing different points of view. You might start to believe that everyone thinks like you. This makes you extremist and your opinions stronger. And when people express extreme opinions without accountability it can contribute to polarization. This makes people more divided.
This also makes it harder to have respectful discussions or understand different perspectives. It creates us vs them. Social media addiction can be compared to addiction to drugs. Traditionally, we have always wanted to explore things on our own. Meet new people, go to new places, learn new hobbies, and gain new knowledge, but to explore something we require patience. And it’s time consuming. The question here is why don’t we get addicted to other things? The answer is that there are two main factors behind it. The first is ease of access, and the second one is speedy reward. When you see a notification on your phone that someone likes your photo or someone left a nice comment on your photo it makes you happy. Here, you get an instant reward, and dopamine is released, but slowly the excitement keeps decreasing. But social media companies also have a solution. They have conducted a detailed study to find out what attracts people more psychologically.
Things which make people more addicted, things that would encourage people to use their apps more. These companies saw us as prey and laid brilliant traps for us. From the color scheme to the layout of buttons in the app, they have paid attention to all of it.
The addiction to social media is very dangerous for your life, for a host of reasons. The first reason is that you will be wasting your time. But this is only a surface-level reason. Apart from this, there is an increase in radicalization. If algorithms keep showing you things that you like then your point of views are developed in an echo chamber. If you want to stop any addiction you have to reduce ease of access. And you’ll have to eliminate the speedy rewards. A simple solution is to delete all social media apps from your phone. If you then wish to access social media you can do so with your phone browser. It will help by reducing the ease of access. It would be not be as easy as it is now to open these apps. Thus, your behavior would change.
Another thing is to turn off the notifications. With this, your mind will not be expecting a reward every minute or every hour. You will open the apps only when you want to. The simple logic is the more difficult the action would be for you, the easier it would be to eliminate your addiction. The effective way to overcome all these is to establish boundaries around social media use. Taking regular breaks from social media can help individuals reconnect with their surroundings and the people in their lives. Encouraging a digital detox, even for a short period, can reduce feelings of comparison and improve mental health. Instead of scrolling through endless feeds, we should spend time with family and friends. We all need to pay attention to how social media is drowning ourselves in it.
