Social media addiction, I would like to share a personal quote here, “the social media apps will outnumber the essential apps on phones in the stores” and I can defend my quote very well by providing the shreds of evidence. Many social media applications are rounding on the internet. With the mobile devices boosted up with the android revolution, there is an increase in the users.
Social media is always considered the best place to share one’s thoughts and perspectives on a particular topic. The usage of social media boosted up with the introduction of mobile devices with android and ios based operating systems. The social media sites have thus designed applications and let their users to easily install on their mobile devices for free. Since then, there is a huge increase in the users, and a trend has been set with the applications of social media.
With better user experience and interface, these social media applications occupied a special place in the user’s hearts.
Social media and its impact on our lives:
The impact of social media in terms of psychological, mental, and physical health, behavior, etc. of the person is a vast subject to discuss. Social media has improved by years and it has now its wings spread in every aspect of our lives, its impact is kind of costly, people use their applications most even when there is no necessity, the laziness has crept inside our minds with the heavy use of these applications. We cannot avoid them now. And if the usage of social media becomes mandatory for every minute, then it is called as social media addiction.
We cannot blame anyone here, the app developers and designers are creative heads, they update the app in such a way to engage the user more than before. With the colorful content, interface updates, and gestures, all these apps that emerged the human brain are now ruling the world. And this addiction is seen among many of us.
Anything if done for long periods, consumed more than required, utilized more than needed can be considered an addiction. Alcohol consumption, video games, internet surfing, eating habits, oversleeping, etc. are all the addictions, we can also include social media addiction to the above, but this addiction is a digital content addiction.
We cannot ignore the addiction to social media, if untreated or unattended, this can capable to turn a healthy person into an unhealthy being. There is a need to identify this and try to stay away from social media during free time. A habit if turned into a hobby, then into addiction can harm us all slowly.
I have personally undergone through this social media addiction, to the status feature, selfies feature, and updates, I have spent 80% of my day time on these platforms until I realized the harm that it caused to my mental status. Through the comments of the fellow people and well-wishers, I have identified the changes in my overall behavior and started to study the reasons for the change. Then it came out to be a social media addiction that continuously distracted me from doing the works, keeps on attracting me with the notifications. I followed a few simple steps and I am going to share them below for effective functioning in beating the addiction.
1. Identifying the addiction
2. Knowing the severity
3. Eliminating the triggers
4. Self-help
Now let us dive into the details and overcome the addictive nature of social media.
1. Identifying the addiction:
We can easily identify the addiction towards anything (here social media) awareness about the symptoms, behavioral change, and reluctance to the daily simple tasks for example personal hygiene, etc. Addictions will deviate us from carrying out regular activities, this not an easy process to identify in the beginning, but if concentrated the changes may be noticed easily. Social media addiction can be identified with a few simple steps
· If you are willing to open the application for every minute to check whether there are any latest updates from your friends
· If you are forced to use the app to post an update for an important or unimportant thing occurred in your life
· If you are not ready to live your life without the application for 2 weeks
· If you are unable to concentrate on any other works if the app isn’t active for a certain period
2. knowing the Severity:
If the addiction is beyond your control and if you are feeling like something dragging you much towards the addiction, then you are in serious need of consulting a professional person who could able to solve the issue. Monitoring your time and amount of time you spent on each app will make you clear of the severity level which you are dealing with. Always remember, when an addicted candidate is restricted to the access to the addiction source that will take the person into a serious depression and it is injurious to the health.
3. Eliminating the Triggers:
Triggers are like the initiatives for an addiction, boredom, feeling hopeless, watching someone using the app, sleeplessness, etc. are the triggers for social media addiction, these triggers are not the same in all the individuals, they are unique since the thought process of all persons will never meet at a common point. Surroundings, conversations, people and works all these are also the key factors that will comprise a trigger for the addiction.
Identifying these triggers and eliminating them one by one with the thought process is a good thing suggested here.
4. Self – Help:
After the realization of all the triggers and the solutions to them along with the identification of the severity of the addiction. It is the time to take a step as a conclusion one and that is helping out yourself to get out of the social media addiction. Before taking any steps, you need to write the step by step process which you are going to take while trying to cast away the addiction to your applications. That must be a written goal and you should design it in such a way that you can follow every step without reluctance.
As I have told you in the beginning that I was a victim too, I will provide you an infographic on how I have applied a few techniques to overcome the addiction to social media. I hope it will help you out too in fighting with your inner demon.
