Social Media Addiction has become a massive problem in society today. These days, it can feel like most of the people you come across are glued to their smartphones.
Whether it’s snapping selfies to post on Facebook or Instagram or sharing views on Twitter, social media can be a big priority. In moderation, this can be fun but for some people, it starts to have a negative effect on day-to-day life and can become an obsession instead.
Here’s how to tell whether your social media usage is verging on the obsessive and addictive.
Is Social Media Really Addictive?
Most of us know at least one person who can’t stay away from social media for very long and you may even be that person yourself.
To begin with, a lot of experts didn’t actually believe that social media can have the same effects as things like alcohol and cigarettes.
Research from Chicago University looked at the cravings of over 200 people aged 18-85 who lived in and around the city of Würzburg in Germany. During the week long study, researchers sent participants out into the wild and checked in with them regularly to see how often they were experiencing urges to access social media, how strong they were and whether they felt compelled to go along with them.
Their findings suggested that social media may actually be harder to resist than even alcohol or cigarettes! Social Media addiction is real and is very common.
According to scientists, the addictive nature of social media sites like Facebook is based on its ability to activate the rewards based part of the brain. It may also encourage pathways in the brain to be rewired in much the same way as drug addiction.
Signs of Social Media Addiction or Overuse
If you’re using social media to the extent that it is affecting other parts of your life, there’s a good chance that you’re becoming over reliant on it.
Some of the signs that it could be taking over your life include:
- You feel the need to log onto social media regularly throughout the day and can’t limit yourself to just one visit per day. If this is particularly strong, it may be the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning and you can’t resist checking it last thing at night just to make sure you’re not missing out on something.
- You feel very anxious if you cannot log onto your social media accounts (because of connectivity issues or a particular site being down, for example).
- You may enjoy presenting yourself in a different light on social media or even adopting a completely new person.
- If social media starts to replace your offline social life and/or has an effect on real life relationships or work. It’s designed to make it easier to communicate but social media can actually have an isolating effect that means some people actually have more online “friends” than real life ones.
- You’ve previously tried to give up or cut back on social media and haven’t been successful.
Can Hypnotherapy Help with Social Media Addiction?
If your social media usage is verging on addiction, you may well struggle to wean yourself off it by reducing the amount of time you spend on these kinds of sites.
If you’re not able to go cold turkey for more than a few days (or at all), hypnotherapy could be the solution for breaking your dependence on social media.
As long as you’re truly committed to gaining a healthier relationship with social media, hypnotherapy can be one of the easiest ways to start doing this.
By tapping into your subconscious mind, your whole perception of social media can be changed so you no longer feel so dependent on it. It can also alter your behaviours and habits relating to social media and replace them with more positive ones that will help you to break the hold.
It can sometimes be the case that an addiction to social media is linked to your state of mind. For example, you may be anxious, depressed, stressed or lonely and using social media as a way to reduce the feelings. Hypnotherapy can help to uncover any underlying factors that may be encouraging or dictating your dependence on social media so that these psychological factors can also be addressed.
Comments
Post a Comment