What are the best secrets about social media? Are you glued on social media? Do you know someone who is online every waking minute of their time? How much sharing is over-sharing? Human beings are social animals, crave attention and social interaction. The channel from which they seek to satisfy their cravings, draws them into their addiction.
Mental addiction is an obsessive compulsive disorder. Counseling is insufficient to pull away from mental addiction. Active actions like a change of life style and development of new, healthy habits, are necessary.
Excessive use of smartphones and computers can lead to digital addiction. It usually starts with a few hours and usage creeps up to many hours, until it consumes the user, who then neglects their responsibilities in life.
Discord app connects people online 24/7. There is always someone on another time zone, who is willing to chat with you. The down side of this is a big downfall as the user is sucked into spending increasingly more time texting people, until it becomes an obsession. Your time to perform other duties is greatly reduced and your standard of work falls. You won’t even have time to talk to your family members. Relationships with family members are strained.
Most people get defensive and put on a denial front. They think it is not a problem and they can manage their tie and even stop their social media anytime. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
When things come to a standstill, and life falls apart, the user needs to get help from counselors, therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists to handle the digital addiction. At this stage, the affected person will feel depressed, and unable to cope. With intervention, they can be guided to reduce and drop the severe addiction that has consumed their life, and slowly return to normalcy.
In the first place, why do people resort to using social media? Don’t they have siblings, cousins, and friends to talk to? The world has changed. Inflation has escalated the rise of the cost of living. People raise smaller family units as they can’t afford to bear more children. Children who are the sole child, and kids who have only one sibling, may not have access to a companion to talk to and share. Young people who seek company turn to the internet and its social media, to find interactive communication.
Many countries show population increase. Some countries show a decline as there is imbalance in births and deaths, and the present population age. There are fewer and fewer eligible old adults to talk to and share experiences. Land is expensive and there is less allocated to free, public use. People search for recreational spaces to walk, fly kites, play football or soccer, or other sports. When we go for a walk for nature therapy, we are often not permitted to pick up fallen flowers and leaves. Some countries have implemented laws against stealing flora and fauna on state land. We live in concrete cities with almost no access to nature. Many people turn to technology to fill the lack of human interaction.
In this rat race of life, we prioritise career over social bonding. We are willing to work overtime for the sake of personal development but not for social cohesiveness with our current social circles. We hold on in vain, to idealised expectations of finding good people who are altruistic and willing to befriend us, just because we are sincere to befriend others.
Some users in social media are sycophants who pretend to share empathy with you, to make friends with you, and later maybe curry favor. This type of user is an echo and because they support your opinion, they reinforce your opinionated, and maybe biased view. You become more prejudiced. Why do people echo your view? As the proverb says, birds of a feather, stick together. They hope to belong to your friend group immediately.
What can happen when a person has a habit of spending a few hours daily on social media?
They read about other people who have done amazing things and they question themselves why they did not do such wonderful things too? They may feel inferior in comparison to other super beings. They may begin to think, “Am I good enough?” This may develop to anxiety and stress as they feel pressure to prove themselves and be on equal footing with others they have seen on social media. As their anxiety and stress gnaws, these people may feel sad. If they don’t break out of this sad mood for more than a fortnight, the sadness becomes depression. Which is a clinical state which usually requires professional treatment.
Young people lack skills, knowledge, experience and support to self-regulate to change to emerge from a negative state. They are vulnerable to mental health concerns.
Being a beautiful and successful person does not mean one needs to have the perfect body shape or high earning power. Social media is full of stereotypes who advocate certain types as being acceptable in society.
Bullying online and in real life can also bring mental health problems. We are all different and there is no rule to say we need to conform to a certain body shape, skin color, religion or economic class.
Factors contributing to increasing use of social media.
- Smaller family units.
- Parents and other family members are too busy to spend time with one another.
- Individuals spend more time alone.
- The cost of living increases.
- Public spaces for recreation decrease in numbers and size.
- Technology gives the false sense of bringing people closer together but isolates people as they spend time alone online.
- The modern post-industrial world encourages independence and individualism, as encouraged by social media.
- Periodical epidemics and pandemics enforce social isolation, which then becomes a habit. For example, the Catholic church Mass attendance decreased by around 50% during the pandemic and the parishioners stayed away even after the pandemic. Humans are creatures of habit and they stuck to their new habit of not attending church.
- Workers and students got used to remote work and class attendance so they preferred this habit being alone and independent. When they feel lonely, they login to their social media to see what others are doing.
- People mistake social media for social bonding. They seem to think social media can come together to help them with comments, and feedback. Long distance relationships can’t come to assist you in practical issues.
Social media is changing. It is no longer mainly for social connectivity, but for marketing and selling products. Social media is the mule of ecommerce.
Social media platforms are also used by governments, and their politicians. Across the public and private sectors, many employers and workers stay connected professionally. These people may also establish networking via personal social media accounts; although there are ethics and professionalism issues.
Employees who post on social media about their job and shareable work experiences can become an “office influencer”. These can connect with current workers to encourage sharing, or impress newcomers to join the company.
Across many social media platforms, many account holders are readers/ consumer users and only a quarter are producers of content. We start to question how can the platform be seen as a social media, when 75% of their users are passive readers enjoying the entertainment.
The reader-consumer seldom interacts with the content-producer; for want of attention drawn back to themselves. They already have low self-esteem and prefer to spend time alone and away from socialisation, by going online alone. For instance, I watch Tik Tok videos but have never posted a message, or connected to anybody on that social media. My use of Tik Tok is passive and I’m not associated with it. When Triump announced his latest decision to force Tik Tok to be sold to American buyer/s, I was unconcerned whether that would happen, or if Tik Tok would get banned in the US. This social media created for users does not earn the respect it needs to hope for a requiem. While the controversy with Tik Tok continues, there has been no protests, virtual or viral, to prevent Tik Tok from being removed because that platform has been blackened by accusations of being anti-American, non-patriotic and non-identifying with everything American.
Young and inexperienced adults have less opportunities to learn body language and other nonverbal cues. AI and ChatBots can not yet fill the gap.
How to handle situations like:
- Smaller family units.
- Parents and other family members are too busy to spend time with one another.
- Individuals spend more time alone.
A family, no matter the size, can commit to spend time together as a family unit. They can designate a certain day’s evening as Family Night. Plan a theme like a family meal together, followed by talking to share and reflect. Other family friendly activities are playing board games, or common hobbies. Talk about what changes you want to see in the family. How you can help to contribute to change, for the sake of your family.
Just like everyone needs to eat, they need to exercise too. The family that eats, and exercises together, may stay together, for better or worse. Doing activities together bonds the family.
Family and friends in the community should spend time together even while working on individual projects. Volunteer to prepare simple food and beverages while working the treadmill. Everyone has to eat and why not eat together as family?
How did social media evolve? Maybe its precursor was the email, group chat, and cell phone messaging. As soon as the landline telephone, aka the constant catcher was invented, people have learned how to evade answering calls. Its common sense to avoid connecting online, to avoid wasting time, energy and resources at the beck and call, whims and fancies of the user at the other end of the line.
Some people overshare on their social media; eager to garner views and excited to share their relationships, some have documented their dating relationships diligently, with the oversight that it may not last. The giver and receiver are equally vulnerable after the relationship breaks up.
Artificial Intelligence can be adapted to run virtual companions avatars. A user can even select their choice parameters to create their own AI companion, using an app. The precursor of these was the Chat Bot who manned question and answer auto-service. Now, the AI ChatBot functions like a companion. Operating systems which use a large language model, can mimic human conversational responses, including some emotions.
Users can connect to their AI companions via social media chat. The bots are programmed to get along socially with the humans and be sycophantic. Hence, the user has a sense of pleasure and appreciation with the AI who kind of mirrors them on every level in compatibility.
Young, single or married men and women who spend time with virtual companions are depriving themselves of time, energy and resources to spend on humans, who are the real connections who can help them.
ChatGPT is a Large Language Model (LLM), which has shown it has some problems. It tends to be sycophantic, agreeing with its user, no matter how biased and prejudiced the reasoning. A program that mirrors the user is dangerous, as it can provide misleading reasoning to fit the opinion.
More info coming soon.
Related posts:
Dream you accidentally revealed your true identity on social media
Thousands of social media followers and yet so lonely – what’s wrong?
Dreaming of meeting your soul mate on social media
– – https://artmater.com/real-vs-virtual-companion-which-is-really-better/