Technology is unavoidable these days. It increases the speed, efficiency and accuracy of our everyday functions. It is meant to improve the quality of our lives by enabling us to accomplish our key tasks and communicate with the key people in our world faster and more efficiently. Yet more and more of us are falling into the technology and social media trap: an irresistible, almost obsessive need to communicate and share your perfect moments with people everywhere. Spending hours online, hardly living offline. We have no time to slow down, gather our thoughts, try new things, find out who we are and who we want to be.

Social media risks

With a rapid growth of social media, we have now entered an era of new addictions and mental health challenges. What was fun and exciting at the beginning has become a great threat to our physical and mental health. The younger the social media users are, the more immersed they become in it, losing their personal identity and self-image.

As social creatures, we need social interactions. We need to belong and be a part of a group, tribe or society of people, with whom we have something in common. We need to feel accepted, connected and loved. Social media gives us the illusion that we are connected while more and more people feel lonely, disconnected and depressed.

Social media is designed to influence us, our beliefs and behaviours. It makes us question less, focus less, think less. It feeds our minds with ideas, emotions, thoughts and content that is heavily influencing not only our identity but our focus, relationships with ourselves and others, response to daily challenges, mental strength and resilience, creativity and happiness. It impacts our life’s vision and expectations by creating the fake sense of perfection, while real life is far from perfect. We constantly compare ourselves to others and their exaggerated perfect profiles, chasing perfection that is impossible to catch. We are continually seeking social validation, depending on every like and share, taking posts off the page if they don’t perform well enough. We depend on opinions of people who don’t know us or don’t care about us.

If you are like me, born in early 80s or earlier, it may sound like an exaggeration to you. You might still have a rich life outside of your social media profile. You might still seek and appreciate the quality time you spend with your family and real-life friends, who know and care about you.

But look at your younger colleagues or your kids. Technology and social media is taking over their life, highly influencing their real-life social relationships. They are more comfortable with their phones than 1-2-1 interactions. They spend hours on their phones, taking to people online rather than real people around them, i.e. during the lunch break. We are isolating ourselves from real situations, living in the imagined, virtual world, disconnected from reality.

A smart phone became a switch between lives.

It makes it possible to move from one life to another, one world to another with just one click. You can instantly move from a very boring meeting with your boss to a fun talk with your friend. We are travelling at the speed of light around the world without paying attention to what is here and now… But our attention can only be in one place at a time. When you are on your phone all the time, you spend less time in the “now”. It is dissocialising humanity, disconnecting our future.

We live in an ultra-connected world. We can get instantly everything we desire, yet we are not any happier.

We waste so much precious time by endless, mindless scrolling, trying to feed our social needs to be noticed, validated and entertained. We have no patience, being used to the instant gratifications. We don’t have to put any effort into remembering things as we can get answers to all our questions immediately, with just one Google search. As everything is so much easier these days it makes us lose core abilities like memory, attention span and communication. It is like we are feeding our brain fast food… fast food always means trouble! Most of the online application are fast, cheap and immediate and offer no nutritional value. But we need nutritious meals, nutritious human interactions to stay healthy. We need to surround ourselves with people who actually care about us - our family, friends even neighbours. We need to connect with people who we have something in common with or share the same interests with.

Why is Social Media Addictive?

Our brain releases the feel-good chemical, dopamine during successful group interaction. Every time we receive a message, dopamine floods our brain. Dopamine is responsible for SEEKING. when we look for something and find it (Google search). We become information seekers, living in the dopamine LOOP. This compulsive addiction is not to the cell phone but to those dopamine releases. It is so easy to get addicted and it is widely accepted.

Therefore, we developed dependence with our phone. We take it everywhere. We get anxious if we don’t have access to the online world, even for a short time. It is similar to drug use, any drug you have ever heard of. This is why when our social media use gets out of check we start seeing the rising levels of anxiety and depression.

Technology and kids’ development

Did you know that kids who spend more time on the phone have less developed frontal cortex?  It is the part of the brain responsible for rational thinking and problem solving. These abilities are being lost by the younger generation at a rapid pace. They are unable to focus their attention on anything apart from phones.

Children as young as 2-4 years old have continued access to the technology. Even using devices on the potty.

How young is too young?

There is no clear answer to that question yet, but researchers are working on it. For now, we have to follow our instincts. And we must take it seriously. New social science research is showing that more kids are feeling more isolated. They don’t know how to connect, don’t play with other kids, don’t learn how to collaborate and work as a team. Moreover, neuroscience research shows reading deficits in young children. They love scrolling but not reading. They are lacking attention and concentration skills and becoming more sedentary.

Children (born after 2010) are less likely to go out with their parents. They are not getting together with their friends that often. More kids are saying they feel lonely, left out, like they cannot do anything right, that life is not useful or that they don’t enjoy life.

They are continually exposed to gossip and judgement. It is so easy to stalk other people online. Online harassment and mental problems are on the rise.

Here are some eye-opening stats:

• 440% of online adults have experienced online harassment

• 73% have witnessed online harassment

• You are more likely to be harassed if you are female, LGBTQ, a person of colour or Muslim

• National screening study found a 50% increase in the major depressive disorder among teens (12-17)

• Suicide rate for 12-14 year olds has doubled since 2007 (data from 2015)

• Teens don’t sleep enough, increasing their stress levels, anxiety, depression

• Teens are 71% more likely than adults to have one of the following risk factors for suicide (feeling sad or hopeless for two weeks, thinking about suicide, attempting to commit suicide or feeling unhappy)

• Even though unemployment is going down people spend more time on social media. We spend twice as much time on our phones then we think we do – for most people it is on average 5h/day

• We are more prosperous but more depressed

• We are wealthier than even and more unhappy than ever

• We have more goods, services and technology available but there is no corresponding increase of our life satisfaction and happiness

• There is more suicides than homicides

• We have faster and faster transport and more complaints about it

• When we hear phone vibrations, we twitch releasing adrenaline and cortisol - which becomes a chronic health problem

• Distraction has become the norm, rather than exception

Social media is neither good nor bad. The way we use it is a problem. As abstinence is not an option anymore, we have to practice safe social, and we have to teach our kids how to use it safely. We need some preventative and coping strategies for when you get low, and you will. You cannot simply stop. To make it successful in the long term you need new habits to prevent another inevitable digital overload. Digital detox is a great tool to make it happen.

• The first step is awareness. Therefore, upload an app that will record your daily phone and social media usage. Once you see how much time you’re spending on various apps (Instagram, Netflix etc.) it will help you decide next steps

• Create no technology zones and times at your home e.g. no technology within the kitchen and bedroom where you can build better relationships with other people. Don’t use your phone as an alarm clock or first thing in the morning

• Slowly reduce your consumption, don’t try to eliminate it completely. when you starve yourself of anything your mind wants to go to the other extreme

• Do more activities that stimulate your brain – leaders are readers, develop new interests, get outdoors. Take a pause in life, build the fort, make a mud pie…

• Change one thing at a time, prioritise the change and you will achieve beautiful, long lasting results.

When it comes to safe social media usage, here are some tips:

• Use social media to build positive relationships, to help you grow and build the online identity that can inspire, motivate and help others, use it for marketing or to spread a good message to the world

• Be the same person online and offline

• Be selective with who you choose to connect to and who you allow to connect with you. Connect only with people who have similar online values and purpose

• Learn to like yourself and discover who you truly are. Don’t be scared to be different, be scared not to be happy! Reclaim your personal identity

We would all live better if we had hands to hold rather than keyboards to click. Free yourself from technology and social media addiction, reclaim your time, do something so profound that it ignites your soul. Don’t be afraid to be different, be you!

REFERENCES:

1. https://jimkwik.com/kwik-brain-097-digital-detox-with-jay-shetty/

2. What I learned from my social media fast | Amber Quinney | TEDxYouth@Buffalo

3. Live in the Moment: Delete Social Media | Ryan Thomas | TEDxAshburnSalon

4. I'm off-grid and I'm not crazy | Esther Emery | TEDxBoise

5. How social media makes us unsocial | Allison Graham | TEDxSMU

6. Social Media Obesity and Loneliness | Galya Westler | TEDxStanleyPark

7. From smartphone addiction to human connection | Ritzo ten Cate | TEDxBreda

8. How the iPad affects young children, and what we can do about it: Lisa Guernsey at TEDxMidAtlantic

9. iGen: The Smartphone Generation | Jean Twenge | TEDxLagunaBlancaSchool

10. Why we're unhappy -- the expectation gap | Nat Ware | TEDxKlagenfurt

11. Pico Iyer - TEDSalon NY2014 - The art of stillness

12. Adam Alter|TED2017 | Why our screens make us less happy

13. The pros and cons of digital life, Sherry Turkle |TED2012 | Connected, but alone?

14. Addicted To Likes | Poppy Jamie | TEDxHollywood

15. What you need to know about internet addiction | Dr. Kimberly Young | TEDxBuffalo

16. Cell Phones, Dopamine, and Development: Barbara Jennings at TEDxABQ

17. Me my selfie and I | Dr Linda Papadpoulos | TEDxWhitehallWomen

18. Hooked, Hacked, Hijacked: Reclaim Your Brain from Addictive Living: Dr. Pam Peeke at TEDxWallStreet

19. Need a Digital Detox? | Tania Mulry | TEDxLaSierraUniversity

20. Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? | Bailey Parnell | TEDxRyersonU