Did you know that you are addicted?

Last week Facebook and Instagram stopped working all day because of a technical issue, impacting millions of users globally. This unexpected disruption (not the first) opened many people’s eyes, showing (again) to all of us how social media platforms have now become an essential part of our daily lives. We use social media to connect with friends and family, stay informed about current events, and even conduct business. Yet, despite some benefits, many of us find ourselves addicted to our screens, unable to tear ourselves away from the endless scroll.

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Where does such powerful ability to gain our attention comes from? These platforms are designed to keep us addicted via continuous notifications, endless stream of content theoretically tailored to our interests and other psychological tactics to keep us glued to the screens. Let's take a closer look.

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Addiction tools 

• Notifications are definitely addicting, starting from instant rewards coming from likes, friends' comments and direct messages. Each signal creates a dopamine rush in our brains, resulting in a pleasurable experience calling for more. It's a beautifully designed dance of reward and reinforcement.
• Endless scrolling is one of the most dangerous parts of social media platforms: it appeals to our natural desire for curiosity and discovering new things. Here too, as we scroll, our brains get filled with dopamine.
• Personalization: social media apps use algorithms to customize information based on user interests, clicks, accounts followed and other choices. After studying our behaviors, the algos generate the most attractive feed - like a personal concierge - serving up content as we exactly like.
• Fear of missing out (FOMO): we are pushed by FOMO to regularly check social media feeds for significant news and events, not to miss out any detail. Social media apps instill a (false) sense of urgency that is difficult to ignore.

We can see that social media addiction is real and is rooted in a wise (if perhaps unethical) mix of psychological triggers and behavioral reinforcement. Leaving aside the benefit of staying connected with the people you care about, it remains critical to be aware of the strategies social media companies employ to constantly borrow our attention. Understanding the addiction factors mentioned above might help to retake control of our lives, then using social media in a way that can benefit (rather than harming) our well-being.

Also, check out:

• Statistics about the “Daily time spent on social networking by internet users worldwide from 2012 to 2023”: as years go by, the hourly usage of social media platforms keeps growing.

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• Here's the “Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2024, ranked by number of monthly active users (in millions)”: top 5 are Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, Instagram and TikTok.

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Last thing: if you didn't watch it yet, you cannot miss the movie "Social Dilemma", a 2020 American film about the negative social effects on people, families and especially teenagers and young kids.