What’s the first thing you do when you wake up and the last thing you do before going to bed? Most of us will check Facebook, Twitter or other social media as habitually. Checking to see if our profiles have received any new messages in the last five minutes since we last checked isn’t as unusual as some would like to believe. The confidence-boosting and addictive nature of maintaining out separate lives on social media is becoming the new 21st century addiction.
Phones, laptops, iPads – our second nature habits that compel us to date radiation and bright screens that mess with our body clocks are becoming a force that is falling into the category of destructive behavior, especially for those between the ages of 13 and 17, where the extremity of addiction is most widespread.
The social ritual of documenting arbitrary moments of our lives while remaining distant within the group of physical beings we come in contact with is leading to an obsession. 71% of teens have been reported using multiple platforms to which they do this on. The more distant acquaintances one has, the more interesting a life is, right?
The virtual world has become a full-time job for most. Missing out on the friend from high school that you haven’t spoken to in person for ten years, and what they’ve had for breakfast isn’t a risk worth taking; or the ex-ex-ex friend of a friend who has just taken a selfie of them portraying the goldfish?
I’m as guilty as the next, filtering through my 30K Twitter followers between articles to see how many Retweets I’ve had today. Yet, on a deeper level, I ask if self-worth is now determined by this very act of pretending to be social with people you have never met. How about messaging your significant other in the other room? Come on, most of us have been guilty of that, even on the back of a joke.
Seriously though, sending dribble as it flows from your fingers without hitting the edit control in our minds that helps us in real life determine what words we should use is becoming an issue. Posting images of places we’ve never otherwise been interested in, not to mention tagging the location where we posted it from is not as engaging as we mislead ourselves to believe.
We are slowly isolating ourselves into a corner of our dark world in front of a fluorescent screen. Our sleepless nights can sometimes be attributed to this as studies have shown. We eventually venture out into a social environment only to find everyone staring down into their phones.
The addiction is real.
I’m a Twitterholic and I have a problem. Where’s the nearest rehab?
This Article (Welcome to the 21st Century Addiction: Social Media) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and AnonHQ.com.
