Well, it turns out we are not entirely to blame for these addictive behaviors as social media companies are hard at work figuring out how to keep us connected as long as possible. Enter the infinite scroll, an interface design feature that loads content continuously as the user scrolls down the page. This feature is very popular with social media sites like Twitter and Pinterest and provides viewers with a never-ending stream of data. The consequence of this display technique is you just keep scrolling with no real end in sight. This of course is ideal for the company as a former Facebook employee quoted in the article states:
"You have a business model designed to engage you and get you to basically suck as much time out of your life as possible and then selling that attention to advertisers."But time and attention is not the only thing that social media can rob us of, it can also negatively affect how we measure our self-worth. The Like button, popularized by Facebook and incorporated into nearly all social media tools, is a convenient way to share our personal tastes but it can also leave us feeling lonely, insecure and can promote an unhealthy need for constant validation.
Our real life relationships have also come under attack. Have you ever been phubbed? Are you phubbing someone right now as you are reading this? Coined in 2012, phone snubbing or phubbing refers to the act of ignoring your partner in order to pay attention to your phone. This is just one of the consequences of our increasingly connected society and having the Internet constantly available at our fingertips through web-enabled smartphones.
So how can you tell if you are at risk of being addicted to social media? In his blog post on Psychology Today, Mark Griffiths provides the following six questions to self-assess your level of social media use.
- Do you spend a lot of time thinking about social media or planning to use social media?
- Do you feel urges to use social media more and more?
- Do you use social media to forget about personal problems?
- Do you often try to reduce your use of social media without success?
- Do you become restless or troubled if you are unable to use social media?
- Do you use social media so much that it has had a negative impact on your job or studies?
The question I asked myself as I read this article, and the question you may be wondering too, is what sort of responsibility do these social media companies have in all of this? Should they be liable for the consequences of addicting users to their products for financial gain?
A fellow blogger recently wrote about the use of artificial intelligence to analyze social media behavior and intervene when necessary. The context of the post was suicide prevention, but it could easily be applied to identifying the thin line between habitual and addictive use of social media. With the right analytical tools, companies like Facebook and Twitter could alert users when their usage shows signs of addictive behavior patterns and provide strategies to limit their time using their product. Of course, this would be in direct opposition to their business model and undoubtedly curtail their revenue, but shouldn’t a company like Facebook, that is built on the idea of bringing people closer together have a moral obligation to look out for the safety of the users in their social network? Let me know what you think in the comments.
References:
Andersson, H. (2018, July 4). Social media apps are “deliberately” addictive to users. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959
Griffiths, M. (2018, May 7). Addicted to social media? What can we do about it problematic, excessive use? [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-excess/201805/addicted-social-media
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