What Is Social Media Addiction And Its Treatment.
Are you curious about how social media addiction works? Do you want to stop being controlled by your phone?
If yes, this blog will help you know the treatment of social media addiction.
What Is Social Media Addiction?
Social media addiction or social media overuse is a proposed form of psychological or behavioral dependence on social media platforms, similar to gaming disorder, Internet addiction disorder, and other forms of digital media overuse.
Causes And Effects Of Social Media Overuse.
- Addiction to social media. People who are addicted to social media may experience negative side effects such as eye strain, social withdrawal or lack of sleep.
- Stress. If you spend your time researching problems or arguing with people, you may experience stress, which can have a negative impact on your health.
- Emotional connections. Social media can help you connect with more people and stay in touch with those with whom you’re already close. Connecting with people has proven health benefits.
- Information. You can find a large amount of health-related information on social media. This can be quite helpful. On the other hand, if you take random advice without doing proper research, it can also be harmful.
- Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. If you do too much keying, you may experience problems that affect your hands or wrists. There are also specific problems associated with keying on mobile phones, which can strain the tendons of your fingers. These problems aren’t all caused by social media. It can just as easily be caused by having to type term papers for school or reports at work.
- Eye problems. You can get eyestrain from staring at screens for too long.
- Fatigue. This is another symptom of overusing social media. If you’re staying up too late posting on Twitter of Facebook, you may be losing valuable sleep.
- Lack of exercise. Social media can cut into time you might otherwise be spending outdoors or exercising.
- Distraction. One of the most dangerous potential consequences of social media addiction is driving while being distracted. As recent stories have confirmed, you can even get hurt texting and walking.
How Social Media Addiction Works?
Basically, social media addiction is a bad habit just like overeating, smoking, over-drinking, etc. That’s why to understand how social media addiction works you need to know about the habit loop/ habit cycle.
Here’s the habit cycle.
The habit cycle is consists of three parts — Cue, Routine, Reward.
- Cue: It is anything that triggers you to follow your habit. Almost all cues fall under these five categories: Location, Time, Emotion, Person, immediately preceding action. For example, notification of Instagram, or crave of checking facebook after reaching to house from school, or watching Youtube video while eating, etc.
- Routine: A habit’s routine is the most obvious element: it’s the behavior you wish to change (e.g. checking Instagram) or reinforce (e.g. reading instead of wasting time on youtube).
- Reward: The reward is the reason the brain decides the previous steps are worth remembering for the future. The reward provides positive reinforcement for the desired behavior, making it more likely that you will produce that behavior again in the future. The reward can be anything, from something tangible (e.g. chocolate), something intangible (e.g. a half-hour of television) to something with no inherent value but what it is given (e.g. tokens).
Here’s an example to illustrate you exactly how the habit loop works…
A boy named Sameer comes from his school, he looks at the mobile of his mother and he immediately takes the phone and opens facebook and boom! He starts scrolling. (#Story of every day.)
Coming from school to home and mobile, both are cues but I believe that coming from school is an actual cue because after looking at his mother’s mobile some other time, he must be doing several things like watching videos or playing games.
Taking the phone and opening facebook is his routine, which he follows every day.
Getting a break or relief from that frustrating subjects and teachers are Sameer’s reward.
Now you know, how social media addiction works. Let's look at how to get rid of it…
Social Media Addiction Therapy/Treatment?
Charles Duhigg, the author of The Power of Habit, suggests the following framework for reshaping bad habits.
Identify the Routine
Most habits have a routine that’s pretty easy to identify: it’s the behavior you wish to change. Duhigg describes his own habit of going to the cafeteria in the afternoon and getting a chocolate chip cookie then sitting down with friends to chat. From there, he had to identify the cue and the reward.
Experiment with Rewards
The reward for a given habit isn’t always as obvious as you might think. While the reward for a daily craving for chocolate could be just the chocolate, it could also be the resulting social interaction with the folks next to the vending machine or an energy boost from the calories (which could be replaced with an apple or some coffee).
Experimenting with rewards is the time-consuming part of hacking your habits. Each time you feel the urge to repeat your routine, try changing the routine, the reward, or both. Keep track of your changes, and test different theories on what drives your routine. In Duhigg’s case, did he want the cookie or just want a walk? Was he hungry or was he just seeking social interaction? Each time you try a different routine, ask yourself after 15 minutes if you’re still craving the original “reward”. Duhigg discovered his craving went away after just chatting with friends — he really craved socialization, and he isolated that craving by experimenting with the rewards.
Isolate the Cue
With the wealth of stimuli bombarding you each day, isolating a habit’s cue is a difficult proposition. Experiments have shown that habitual cues generally fall into one of the five aforementioned categories; to whittle down what could be triggering your habit, write down answers to the following questions to see what patterns emerge when an urge or craving strikes you:
- Where are you?
- What time is it?
- What’s your emotional state?
- Who else is around?
- What action immediately preceded the urge?
Have a Plan
When Duhigg finished his study of his chocolate cookie habit, he discovered that his cue was the time of roughly 3:30 pm, his routine was to go to the cafeteria, buy a cookie, and chat with friends. The reward, he discovered, was not the cookie itself, but the opportunity to socialize. Thus, he created this plan for working around his habit: At 3:30, every day, I will walk to a friend’s desk and talk for 10 minutes. He then set an alarm on his watch for 3:30.
While implementing the plan had its hiccups, after a few weeks of paying careful attention to his new routine, he now does it unconsciously, as a habit. Just one that’s better for him.
That’s how you can also get rid of your bad habits or reform it as a good habit.
Conclusion
If you use social media then it’s ok, but if social media uses you…
You are in big trouble!!!
