How social media is addictive and what to do about it

Ilona Rahnasto
Nov 8 · 3 min read

Nowadays almost all of us use social media and internet every day. You might go through a whole day without talking to anyone in person but think about a day without your phone. You probably check your phone whenever you have a chance — or even when you shouldn’t! The

There is a fine line between normal social media use and addiction. Basically it could be said that your use of social media becomes an addiction when it is harmful to either you or your surroundings. This can mean affecting your work or social life negatively, when your phone is taking all your attention. One clear sign of addiction is that you are unable to put your phone away when a friend or family member asks you to. Another sign might be that when you should be doing something else you are yet on social media. Social media addiction could be compared to other types of addictions, like gaming or drugs. It might cause tiredness, restlessness, anxiety or lack of focus.

There are two types of social media addiction: passive and active addiction. Passive addiction means that you want to scroll your feed and check other people’s posts, for example on Instagram or Facebook. You might not be able to stop the scrolling even if you knew you should. Active addiction means that you have the urge to post on social media.

Not only is social media creating addiction to its users, but it is also said to contribute to a phenomenon called “continuous partial attention”. This means that people are unable to fully focus on important tasks. It might even lower your IQ. This is affecting all of us, not just the ones severely addicted, and even just the presence of your smartphone can damage your working capacity.

Social media usage and addiction is not simple, since it is strongly connected to our relationships with others and to our own identity. We interact with other people and create new kinds of forms of socializing, which is extremely important to maintaining our social connections and our overall social psychology. Some quantity of social media usage is thus considered even healthy.

Because of the psychological effects of social media it is hard to not only identify social media addiction but also try to reduce your time on it. And since it is psychologically addictive, it is not easy to control the time you spend on it. There are, however, some things you can do yourself to prevent addiction and overuse of social media. There is even a growing phenomenon called “pushback”, where people actively seek to gain more boundaries between them and technology.

Some people go for digital detox. This is a certain type of fasting where for a period of time you do not use social media, your phone or the internet at all. This is seen as an opportunity to reduce stress and to focus on the physical world instead of the virtual world. This, however, is a pretty radical approach to reducing social media use, but can be helpful when it’s done in shorter periods of time.

Another way to be less affected by social media is to create physical or virtual blocks for it. Leave your phone in the other room and don’t let yourself go and get it. Or even better, leave it at home for the day if you know you can go a day without it. This will help you focus when working or doing something important, since you can’t see your phone and are less aware of it. There are also many applications that can help you use less social media. You can make them block and control the time you are allowed to spend on specific applications. Many phones have also in-built time monitors, where you can see how much time you are spending on your phone and on which applications.

It is important to take social media addiction seriously, and the best way to prevent from forming an addiction is being aware of how much social media is taking of your time. If you catch yourself thinking about social media or using social media in situations you shouldn’t or in situations where you should concentrate or pay attention to something important, you might want to think of a way to reduce your time on social media. And even if you don’t feel addicted, you might still want to consider some kind of social media or technology reduction in your life.

Social Media Writings

This is the forum for writings about social media phenomena. The texts are part of Social Media course at Aalto University. Some of the texts are anonymous.