1. Introduction
How many hours do you spend checking social media in a day?
It has recently become a hot topic that Facebook hid the results of the internal investigation that revealed the negative effects social media has on users.
As Instagram and other social media service have become a strong part of our lives, it is necessary to know the cause of addiction, the harms, and so on.
2. What is “social media addiction”?
Social media is a virtual community where people can interact with real-life friends and strangers. Instagram is problematic social media that may causes addiction. Unlike online games, social media is considered to be attractive because it can be used for maintaining relationships with real (offline) friends. However sometimes people feel left out or unable to keep up with others if they don’t constantly check their accounts, and are forced to actively participate in social media. It has also been observed that social networking often leads to the destruction of friendships rather than the maintenance of them, as it allows people to say things that are difficult to say in person without restraining their emotions and impulses.
3. What happens to people addicted to social media?
They have negative thoughts by looking at other people’s posts. They often compare themselves to others which causes them to feel depressed.
They are getting involved in online problems. For example,their phone can be hacked by a stranger and sometimes their personal information are stolen by a hacker.
They can’t concentrate on what they have to do because they care social media notifications. Many people tend to care the numbers of likes they got on their post or who saw the post or story they updated.
They use social media apps for a long time and it interferes with my real life activities.
4. The reasons why people addict to social media
There are some reasons that cause our social media addiction. I am going to introduce two of them here.
First of all, many of us are very self-conscious. In general, we want people to have a positive impression on us. So they frequently use social media such as Instagram and Facebook and update their recent state or check what others do.
Social media is also a useful tool for them to catch up with their community or trend. In order to keep relationships with friends or people around them and to keep up with the trend, they tend to spend many hours collecting recent information from social media.
5. Conclusion
You may become a social media addiction without even knowing it. Recently, Instagram has added the function for parents to set time limits. Although we are adults and not under the control of our parents or guardians, it may be a good idea to set your own time rules or try to live a life completely away from social media once in a while.