NEW DELHI, Feb 18: Many people have compared the addictive nature of social media to cigarettes. Checking your likes, they say, is the new smoke break. Others say the unease over social media is just the next round of moral panic about new technologies.
We are a pair of researchers who investigate how social media affects the mental health of young people. More than 75% of teens check their phone hourly, and half say they feel like they’re addicted to their devices.
Here are some of the things they’ve told us: “TikTok has me in a chokehold.”
“I would 1,000% say I am addicted.”
“I feel completely aware that it is hijacking my brain, but I can’t put it down. This leaves me feeling ashamed.”
Maybe you’ve had similar feelings yourself, no matter your age. Although it’s true social technologies offer clear benefits – unlike smoking – many people still feel uncomfortable with how much time they spend online and often wonder if they’re addicted.
Years of investigation have led our team to this conclusion: Perhaps a better approach is to view your media consumption as a diet. Just as there are many ways to have a healthy diet, there are also a variety of ways to develop healthy and personalized social media habits.
More than 500 college students with a wide range of social media habits have participated in our ongoing study. The students begin by reflecting on their current relationship with social media and then set goals for the changes they want to make. This might include spending less time mindlessly scrolling, curating their feed on an app or not sleeping with the phone in the bedroom.
For four weeks, participants report their success in adhering to their goals. They also reflect on their feelings and experiences through journaling and completing standard psychological surveys that capture social media addiction and other mental health outcomes.
Our initial analysis indicates that the four-week intervention significantly reduces social media addiction for those who started with problematic or clinical levels of social media addiction.
Problematic social media addiction is associated with a host of negative effects including moodiness, anxiety and an excessive amount of time and energy spent on or thinking about social media. People with clinical social media addiction levels experience those same effects but to a great degree, with their habit patterns around social media resembling that of an addict.
Those with problematic social media addiction scores at the start of the intervention showed a mean reduction of 26%, and scores for participants who began with clinical social media addiction scores fell by 35%. These reductions brought both groups into a healthy range of social media use by the conclusion of the intervention.
At the end of the four weeks, participants reported positive changes in their relationships with social media with statements like the following:
“I feel as though my connections have strengthened with my friends because when I now communicate with them, it is to have an actual conversation, rather than to pass the time responding to Snapchats.”
“I find (social media) a lot less appealing in a lot of ways and haven’t really felt the urge to post something in a long time. I think I am … using it for fun or connectedness instead of distraction.”
“This challenge has positively changed how I view social media, and social approval.”
If you can’t eat gluten, you probably don’t keep wheat-based bread in the kitchen. A truly healthy diet requires learning which foods make you feel your best and finding joy in eating certain foods in moderation. Similarly, our research shows that spending some time setting goals and engaging in self-reflection can change your relationship with social media – for the better. (The Conversation)
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