Are you a Social Media Addict?

Social media is wonderful. Especially in this day and age where it is the voice of the voiceless, in many cases. The question however is, are you hooked to it?When I read this concept I thought, it’s impossible to be an addict, that’s for drugs. There however is a scientific explanation to it, just a bit of Biology to convince you.

There’s this organic chemical called dopamine in your brain that works with motivating stuff in your brain. It is stimulated by uncertainty making social media a perfect stimulant because you never really know with what’s going to happen with the gram or what’s going to be trending on twitter.

If you want to go full geeky and understand the whole concept then by all means read this you’ll especially find the part that talks about disclosing information giving the same pleasure as sex, very interesting.

In the meantime I made a small list that’s not half as bad as googling your symptoms. Just a general overview nothing too serious because its never that serious really.

• The first and last thing you do is check your social media

You know how they say the greatest achievement of the day is making your bed. Well I happen to fall in this category more than I’d like.

A friend once told me that they spent about an hour every morning going through they Instagram feed. Today he only has whatsapp because productivity levels were plunging a bit too low.

• Your moods are pegged on your social pages

When you hit a 1000 likes in a few hours you’re ecstatic. When you don’t hit 200 in a couple of minutes you’re having a nervous breakdown or an anxiety attack. Now there’s definitely a problem.

I’d start preaching about your validation not being from social media but that’s not the intent behind today’s post.

• When anything happens in your life the first thought is to share it on social media.

When something happens that makes you feel nice about yourself it prompts a need of self disclosure which is basically talking about yourself with the domino effect of boosting your self esteem.

Now this is not necessarily bad but in my view the problem is where everything about you is on your social media.  What falls here, well what I’d call a litmus test is, if your friends don’t call or text you any day will they still know each and everything you do from IG, Facebook, Snapchat or even Twitter.

• You can’t survive a few hours without checking you phone.

There’s this concept called deep work, where you just put everything away and focus 100% on the work your doing. At this time WiFi is off, your squad will only call if it’s an emergency and the phone is on silent or do not disturb mode.

A lot of us can’t actually do this. The whole concept of just being quite and doing something is insanely foreign so we just play music to go with.