Social Media: The Digital Drug

Ding. Snapchat.

Ding. Instagram.

Ding, ding. It can wait.

Diiinnnngggg. It’s practically begging to be opened - as if there’s no choice but to pick up the phone. You tap on Snapchat, open the snaps, snap-back, look at your friends’ stories, check out Snapmap, read the latest Hooked, and so on. Next thing you know, you’re immersed in an endless feed of ASMR videos and Twitter memes on your Instagram Explore page. Tap, tap, tap. Click, click, click. It goes on for hours.

This is the inevitable, itching presence of social media that people, especially teens, face on the daily. The thing is, social media can actually be beneficial, to a certain extent. For starters, the convenient design of popular apps like Instagram and Snapchat allows for an accessible way to communicate with others, from making plans with friends to connecting with family across the globe. It enables you to express yourself by sharing your memories and experiences and provides a platform through which you can voice your opinion, something that may not be possible elsewhere.

However, the persistent wave of chats, posts, shares, likes, and comments come at a cost. According to Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University, “very few people are genuinely addicted to social media. However, many people’s social media use is habitual and it can start to spill over into other areas of their lives and be problematic.” Social media certainly has its downsides: depression and anxiety, subjecting users to cyberbullying, negative body image and unrealistic expectations, loss of sleep, and more. The main factors that drive bad social media habits and social media addiction are the fear of missing out and a constant need for validation.

A fear of missing out, also known as FOMO, is the anxiety that a fun or interesting event is traspiring elsewhere, and you aren’t there to experience it. Posts on social media often trigger this “fear”— teens feel as if they have to know what everyone is doing and where, something social media makes extremely easy. This frequent need to know results in excessive checking habits and the inability to stay off our phones. In a BBC School Report, nine students from the Haggerston School were challenged to go social media-free for a week. Only three succeeded. A student who gave in to the challenge, Shaveen, describes an experience from his week: “The second day in and I was at school chatting with my friends and there was a video on Facebook that they all watched the evening before and were speaking and laughing about it. I felt as if I couldn't be as engaged in the conversation as I would otherwise be.” This is a clear situation of FOMO. Shaveen felt that he was missing out on something that all his friends enjoyed, even if it was just a short Facebook video.

Apart from FOMO, social validation is also a predominant cause of our addictive behaviour toward social media. Psychologist Pamela Rutledge explains that “social validation is important; a Facebook like is a social signal. It affirms our existence the same way that someone nodding at you on the sidewalk does.” For teens, this includes the number of likes, comments, and followers they have, what their ratio is, their Snap Score, the list goes on. Their social status is defined by numbers. According to an article from the American Psychological Association, people are inclined to compare themselves with others. The same article also explains upward and downward social comparison. An upward social comparison is comparing yourself with someone who is “better” than you. It has its benefits, such as idolizing and becoming more like the comparison target; however, it usually also results in thinking less of yourself. A downward social comparison is comparing yourself to someone who is “inferior” to you, often leading to a more positive outlook on yourself but also revealing how things could be worse and thus causing anxiety.

So, you now know how big of a nuisance social media can be. How can we deal with it? At Havergal, steps have already been taken to reduce social media use and screen time with the no device policy during lunch. Personally, I think this new rule is surprisingly effective. Although it sometimes can be unfavourable, I find myself wanting to check my phone less and getting less distracted when doing my work. Something else you can try is to limit screen time. iPhones have a new screen time feature where you can set a certain time for a type of application. When the time is up, you are restricted from using that app.

No one's asking you to quit social media completely, but I think we would all benefit from a digital detox every once in a while.