Am I Addicted to Social Media?

Over the past twenty years, excessive use of information and communication technologies has become a part of the addiction narrative, often under the umbrella of impulse-control disorder.

As a college student, I often hear (and use) the phrase “procrastination” when it comes to poor working habits. Upon reading this piece on social media and internet addiction, I have now begun to wonder how much procrastination can be attributed to this new phenomenon. In a certain context, social media and technology can be very dangerous if we do not know how to limit ourselves, as many of us don’t.

Now, I could be just speaking from my own personal experience, but I have noticed that the times where I am unsuccessfully trying to get work done, I end up looking checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or watching YouTube videos. Perfect example would be this blog post that I am currently typing up at 2 in the morning. I was planning on finishing this at least two hours ago, but I got distracted looking at corgis and here I am.

For those of us with internet addiction, the question then becomes how do we combat it? For most people, the internet and social media plays a big role in how they live their lives so for those of us who have a supposed addiction, this is a tough one to deal with. Obviously the solution to this problem can’t be to simply eliminate all internet presence in our lives and delete all of our social media accounts. However, a certain discipline is required of us, especially when it comes to getting work done. Otherwise, you end up finishing work at 2 in the morning, which isn’t good for anyone…..