My Name is… and I’m Addicted to Social Media
I am the only one that thinks that it would be a great idea if someone invented Social Media Anonymous Meetings.
So, unfortunately Apple has this fantastic new feature where there’s a daily reminder of how many hours you’ve spent on your phone in a day, and I spend on average around eight hours on. Yes, that’s terrible, hold your judgement because it get worse. Three quarters of that time is spent endlessly scrolling through Instagram and capturing moments on Snapchat. I am addicted to social media, every other 10 seconds I have to be on Instagram, one could even say that it brings me a lot of entertainment.
I have tried so many times to take a break from social media and each time I do it, it is almost as if I had forgotten how to live life without it or that I my thumb can’t scroll on the timelines of Twitter, there’s no purpose for it anymore. I am convinced that the makers of Instagram put some form of hypnosis within the screen to ensure to that you never want to leave. And although this may be humorous, the truth of the matter is, it has become a serious not just for me but the whole world. We have become so accustom to social media being a part of our daily routine, from the minute we wake up to the time we go to bed, that the idea of living without is almost impossible. Of course, there are some great benefits to the rise of social media; we are able to communicate with others, discover new things, share our own opinions of things, create opportunities for ourselves, the list goes on, but there are some great downfalls of it too.
In some ways it has affected the way in which people see themselves, social media has blurred the perception of our reality, painting a perfect world when that can never be the case. Social media allows us to be whoever we want to be and we all take advantage of that, I know I do. My social media makes me seem like I look like Beyoncé every day when in reality on a daily basis, I look more like cabbage patch doll. Because of our ability to be whoever we want to be it means that people love it even more as they can create their own new identity. This perceived portrayed perfection can cause people to have a lack of self-esteem by comparing themselves to others by constantly seeing others and their ‘perfect lives’. Social media as a whole is a recurring circle, just like the Instagram timeline, there’s no end: our addiction to social media feeds our conscience and our egos and vice versa and it’s because of this that we can never stop.
Part of our happiness and joy is stemmed from and is controlled by our love for likes and comments. Last year, there was a huge controversy around Instagram removing their likes system, some explained that they did not mind this idea, whereas others disapproved, explaining that if the likes no longer existed there would be no use for Instagram because the whole point of Instagram is to get likes. When Instagram first was introduced to the world, its sole purpose was to create a space for people to have the ability to spread their collection of photos and over the years, that vision has become completely altered. This only shows the constant craving we have as a society to be liked and to gain the approval of others. We have become dependent on it, you could even go to the extent of saying that we have become addicted and we constantly keep feeding this addiction, to a point where I don’t think we will be able to stop. The more evolved and advanced social media becomes, the deeper our addiction gets. So then we could ask the question: is our social media addiction our own fault or the fault of the creators of Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter? Although there is no definite answer for this, you could argue that the fault can be given to both parties; the creators recognise our love for being appreciated and complimented so they are constantly developing ways to indulge this love.
Don’t get me wrong I love a good social media but we have to question ourselves sometime, am I addicted?
