Impacts of Social Media Addiction
Have you ever felt like being in control of your cell phone? Do you have the experience of just taking a look on your Instagram for one second, but your sight and hands just uncontrollably stick to it? Social media addiction is universal in this generation, as the development of technology took off and bloomed at a rapid speed, no one is able to escape from the digital world. According to U.S. Addiction Center (2021), the definition of a “social media addiction” means that one is overly putting his or her attention on social media, and is uncontrollably desiring to log on or scroll on their social media. Despite social media somehow reducing the distance between people, there are plenty of harm we need to know in terms of social media addiction. This essay will discuss the effects of being addicted to social media on one’s health physically and mentally, and social lives.
First of all, spending too much time on social media unarguably brings negative impacts on one's physical health. As one spends a long period of time facing the screen, vision’s disease or weaknesses are easily caused by blue light which is produced by electronic devices. Hence, one’s neck and fingers will be damaged from remaining the same gesture for too long. The symptoms, such as headaches, back pain and Arthritis are not hard to find in social media addicted patients. Plus, people who use social media more often were found having higher possibility of connecting with serious illnesses, like diabetes and certain cancers out of CRP (C-reactive protein) capacity than people who use fewer social media, according to the Science Daily’s research (2021). Each part of one’s body will be easily but seriously damaged out of long-using-time in social media.
Secondly, our mental health and emotions are easily controlled by what information we receive. For people who dived into and somehow lived in the social media world, their feelings will be dragged and pulled by the posts they saw. However, people who are addicted to social media lack the ability to filter and judge the information they receive as they receive more than they could chew off for a day, or a period of time. The Help Guide U.S. (2021) posted an article about social media and mental health, and one of the main points that was mentioned in it was that social media addiction did increase our insecurity on the way we look; the images of oneself in other people’s eyes. Moreover, it is more often for people who relied on social media to be connected with have mental illnesses like depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. The reasons for these impacts are that people would compare themselves to people who they saw on social media like Instagram and Facebook, where people show the best sides of their lives and hide the sorrow and pain. The feeling of loss and defeat could be reasonably caused out of comparison with people who you think have better lives than you do. As we can see from research mentioned in this paragraph , using more than enough social media does more harm than good to us in terms of mental aspects.
Thirdly, addiction on social media is the root of one’s isolation from his/her social lives. When one rather spends time on the digital world instead of on the reality, soon he/she will lose the ability to communicate with real human beings. Sticking with social media developed a way of communication by having conversation in texting, words in digital, as long as one got used to seeing texting as the major way for one to connect with the world, speaking in actual words becomes difficult and unusual to oneself. People who were addicted with social media sometimes found themselves shy and awkward to speak whatever in public or in small groups, as one-on-one texting was the most frequent format for them to talk with people. People become isolated from the real world out of inconfidence and awkwardness to talk to people face-to-face, which does more harm than good to one’s social life.
Even though social media might bring something good to our lives, the impact on one’s health, social lives, and mental condition, and social life caused by addiction in social media is a loss that outweighs the gain. Controlling the amount of time, we spend scrolling on social media, setting ourselves restrictions and filtering information we receive online could stop us from destroying ourselves by relying too much on the digital world.
References:
Social Media addiction, (2021), Addiction Center:
https://www.addictioncenter.com/drugs/social-media-addiction/
Social Media use tied to poor physical health ,(2021), Sciencedaily :
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220124103917.htm
Social media and mental health, (2021), Help Guide:
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm