Social media is wonderful and powerful. It allows us to share our day-to-day lives with family and friends, to learn about current events quickly, and to get personal first-hand accounts of major news stories immediately. Social media is so powerful, that it is credited with triggering coups and stoking political revolutions. Social media also allows us an escape when we want to avoid things. We want to procrastinate? It’s always there and always on. A task that is waiting for us is causing anxiety? We can always escape into the digital void. Anytime.
For many of these reasons, we use social media often and a lot. Statistics from Social Media Today and the Department of Health and Human Services tell us that adults spend an average of 2 hours per day on social media. Teens spend up to 4 hours per day engaged in social media. Because of the perfect match between the way these networks are engineered and our biology, it is massively addictive.
Social media is made to grab our attention and keep it; it is engineered that way. In fact, most social media business models hinge on claiming our attention and time. Most sites sell ads, and the more eyeballs they can claim, the more money they can charge for their ads. So, what is it about how social media is engineered that makes it so difficult to put down?
The most successful sites and apps hook us by tapping into our deepest human needs. For example, all social media sites use a notification number. This is that little red number on the app. It shows us the number of people who like our post, mention us, or follow us. This number draws us in. It tells us there is information that we really want to know but doesn’t tell us enough to satisfy our curiosity, so we’ve got to click.
Snapchat Snapstreak displays how many days in a row two friends have snapped each other and rewards their loyalty with an emoji. Another example is the Facebook Messenger feature that automatically tells a sender when the recipient reads the note—this activates our hardwired sense of social reciprocity and encourages us to respond. Since they know we read it, we feel we have to say something back.
With regards to the biology of social media, there are two systems in our brains that contribute to addictions: dopamine and opioids. Dopamine is a chemical that causes seeking behavior; it makes us curious and fuels our searching. Opioids make us feel enjoyment and pleasure, they signal satisfaction.
The dopamine system, however, is stronger than the opioid system. Anticipating a reward is often more stimulating and exciting than actually getting the reward. Often, the dopamine system keeps saying “more”, causing us to keep seeking even when we have found the information. How many times have you gone into social media to look at a specific article and realized, an hour later, that you were still online looking for more information? When our seeking isn’t turned off, at least for a little while, then we can start to run in an endless dopamine loop.
Unpredictability stimulates dopamine. Social media hooks us because messages, photos, and “likes” appear on no set schedule, so we check for them compulsively, never sure when we’ll receive that dopamine-activating prize. Further, this dopamine system is most stimulated when the information coming in is small, so it doesn’t fully satisfy. A short text or Twitter post is ideally suited to send our dopamine system raging. We also know that when we stop using social media, we experience withdrawal symptoms. And, like any chemical addiction, we are more likely to escape to it if we feel alone, alienated, and bored.
Social media and technology addiction are real. So how do we take control?
Know we are being played. For every effort we make to take control of our digital use, there’s a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job it is to get us re-engaged.
Set some limits. Stay off social media during meals, when commuting, and when we’re in the bathroom or in bed.
Buy an alarm clock. If we use our phone as an alarm, the first thing we’ll do each day is stare at that screen.
Limit our bedtime use of electronics. The research in this area is really solid. If we read any backlit screen before bedtime—or have screens on or available in our bedroom—then chances are that we may very well be disrupting our normal healthy sleep patterns.
Turn off the notifications and cues. Adjust the settings on our cell phone and on our laptop, desktop, or tablet so that we don’t receive the automatic notifications.
Try one tech-free day per week with no recreational screen time. A little time away from the screen reminds us how nice life is without status updates. Taking a break unlocks creativity. When distractions disappear, ideas come.
Rather than reaching for our phone the next time we’re bored, just don’t. Do something else instead. Look out the window. Pet our cat. Play fetch with our dog. Go for a bike ride in our neighborhood. Do a relaxation exercise. Talk to a real-world human being. Ponder the meaning of life. Say a prayer.
We are being manipulated by sites and their creators to waste far too much time in a way that benefits them, not us. We have a choice.
