Q: Are social media addictive? A: Who knows?
Are social media addictive?
“Who knows"?” was my initial response when I read the brief article Is social media addictive? ‘Digital detox’ study suggests not in the November 8 SCIENCE. The subhead of the article describes the findings of a recent research study:
Going cold turkey on sites like Instagram and X had no noticeable impact on emotional state or cravings.
The reported study is somewhat limited and leaves many questions open, such as how much time you need to be away from “addictive” social media for the absence to be permanent, how you use social media in the first place, and—most important to me—how engaged you really are with other people via social media.
In my case I gave up Twitter (now known as X), Instagram, and Facebook a while back. I had been a heavy user and even champion of sorts for many years. This usage—and subsequent abandonment—occurred long after my favorite social media tool, Google+, had shut down.
Much of my disaffection was based on disappointment that social media had not evolved the way I had anticipated. Instead of being a tool for communication and collaboration among friends and colleagues I saw much of social media traffic was of of questionable inauthenticity either from a political perspective or because social media had become such a heavily used tool for advertising and propaganda.
I did find that (a) a conscious expansion of my newsgathering processes significantly enhanced awareness of what is going on in the world, and (b) continued use of text messaging and photo sharing via Flickr and Google Photos removed a possible decline in awareness of what was going on with members of my family.
While I believe that withdrawal from use of social media is possible, the value of doing so also depends on what else one does with one’s liberated time.
Copyright (c) 2023 by Dennis D. McDonald
