Social Media and Addiction

A chimpanzee brain at the Science Museum London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It is human nature for our brain to be constantly in need of new information.  Social media delivers just that.  It is an excuse when you’re bored.  An easy way to stalk your best friend.  The leading cause of procrastination.  But most importantly, it is an addiction.

Personal Consumption of Social Media

Personally, facebook and twitter consumes a lot of my time.  The invention of applications on our phones gives us the ability to reload our FaceBook or twitter every second, if we want to.  Most people I know will go out to dinner and spend half of their time on their phones looking at status updates and tweets.

But why?  I believe that social media is addicting in the way that waking up for high school was bearable.  Sure, classes were boring and you wanted to smash your alarm clock.  But, being able to see and interact with all of your friends in between classes and during lunch more than made up for both injustices.

Why Addiction?

Human nature as a whole constantly craves social interaction.  Social media feeds this craving on an infinite scale.  No one needs to step out of their house anymore.  Information about friends, sports, news, and even other countries can be generated with just a username, email and password to a social media site.  The abundance of information that social media delivers makes it an addicting phenomenon that few people can explain.

Social Media Challenge

Start your vacation with a splash (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I would like to challenge anyone to take a week off of social media.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say most people will fail within the first 2 hours.  By having access to social media for so long, going without it feels like there’s a black hole, as if we lost a part of us.  Those who don’t use social media in our culture are seen as rebels.  After all, how many people do you know without a facebook?

And for those social media addicts out there remember one thing,

“you are what you tweet” – Alex Tew.

A perspective on social media by Kevin Anderson, our LaCrosse playing intern from UWMadison

Related articles

• Study: Social media is ‘brain candy’ (bizjournals.com)
• Twitter Addiction: Fact or Fiction? (drjezphillips.wordpress.com)
• How to avoid the selfishness of social MEdia (adigaskell.org)
• Our Brains Make Facebook Worth $90 Billion (neurosciencemarketing.com)
• See brain surgery Storified on Wednesday (storify.com)
• Why you might really, actually be addicted to Facebook (howto.cnet.com)
• Social media is the devil… and I’m getting old! (gemnicholls.com)
• Would Gandhi Use Social Media? (shareable.net)
• Let’s get real about ‘digital detoxing’ (news.cnet.com)