How to Deal With Facebook Addiction
Facebook affects my productivity, my mental well-being, and my relationship with my wife, who doesn’t care too much about my frequent check-ups. I need help.
However, I can’t (or don’t want to) just delete my account. Facebook doesn’t just suck the time. It is valuable for keeping in touch with friends and family, viewing photos of loved ones, using it as a source of news and research, or just while away the time.
Facebook recently surpassed two billion users . Many of these people cross the line of overuse when we like it for what it offers, but also hate being sucked into the time-consuming maelstrom where it takes us away from more important and more enjoyable activities and even engages us in action. on Facebook that we don’t like, for example in disputes.
Are we addicted to social media? In some extreme cases, the answer is yes. But for the majority, everything is less awful.
“What most people think of as addiction is just poorly regulated behavior,” said Andrew Przybilski , an experimental psychologist at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute. Tech addiction specialist Przybylski explained that people often don’t understand why they spend so much time on social media like Facebook and want them to be able to stop.
How can social media cross the line of addiction? This is when everything else becomes irrelevant.
Difference between behavioral and chemical addiction
Activities such as technology, work, gambling and sex cannot become addicted to chemicals, as is the case with nicotine, alcohol and opiates. The former are behavioral addictions and they can be strong. Moreover, they are just as difficult to deal with.
“I don’t see anything in terms of abstinence,” said Mark Griffiths, a psychologist and professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University. “You can’t tell workaholics not to work anymore or sex addicts never to have sex again. Likewise, online addicts cannot usually be told to stay offline. “
Griffiths has a popular psychology blog , and one of the things we discussed was the little buzz we both get from the post getting a lot of traffic. In one of his posts, he described how behavioral addiction, especially in the case of gambling, can be “as serious as drug addiction.”
How do you know if you are really addicted to Facebook? Griffiths gives some information:
- This becomes the most important activity in your life.
- Use conflicts with other activities.
- You use it to change your mood. You do this to get high or numb.
- You develop tolerance and you need more and more to get the same mood-changing effects.
To define addiction, you need to consider its severity, with the first two being the most important. Is social media the most important thing in your life? So much so that everything else goes to hell?
I just spend a couple of hours a day. I still do my job, exercise a lot, eat a healthy diet, and take care of my family. And I will choose sex any day, not Facebook. Ergo, not addicted.
Uf.
But I still have the problem of wasting too much time and even generating anxiety, so what can be learned from the compelling nature of social media platforms like Facebook, and what can high-frequency users do to reduce their numbers?
This helps to understand what may be causing this in the first place.
FOMO and how it relates to social media use
Andrew Przybylski spoke about certain psychological needs of people: a sense of belonging, a sense of competence, and a sense of autonomy. He was the lead author of a 2013 study published in Computers in Human Behavior that determined that when people have low levels in these three areas, they have high FOMO levels. A high FOMO correlates with high social media usage.
Why is FOMO pushing us towards a platform like Facebook? From research: “Engaging with social media is a highly effective, low-friction pathway for those focused on staying connected to what’s going on.”
There are no definitive answers to questions such as “how much Facebook do you use”. To define “higher social media engagement,” the study authors asked if people had used it within 15 minutes of waking up, with meals, and within 15 minutes of sleep over the past week. I have answered yes to these three for most of the past seven days. Damn it.
“The more people have FOMO, the more likely they will have both positive and negative feelings about Facebook,” Przybylski said. I am writing this article as a therapy to control my use because it worries me. And I’m not the only one who gets annoyed by overuse. For more Facebook abuse anecdotes, I of course went to Facebook to ask other users.
Nicholas said: “I noticed that I am MUCH more productive with a boss in my office because I spend less time on social media.” Jenny responded to this comment like this: “Work tasks sometimes get in the way, but I have two mobile phones and both usually die by my 6 hour mark due to social media use.” Pay attention to the language: her job gets in the way of exhausting her two phones through social media. She also admitted to using Facebook while driving and that this comment was given while driving.
This is not good.
Jenny added, “I’m bad, but nothing compared to my partner.” Suzanne said of Facebook, “The biggest waste of time in my life that I continue to use no matter what.” Michelle said, “My husband is always on the phone and on Facebook, even when we go to dinner.”
Risk versus reward
But that’s not all bad information. Thanks to Facebook, I’ve learned to write better. If by better I mean more popular. By studying what takes off and what dies on the social media platform, I can adjust the theme and tone and give people what they want. Are you addicted to Facebook? The answer will shock you!
Mark Griffiths says, “There are few people who are genuinely passionate about Facebook.” Griffiths co-authored a study of 5,961 teenagers published earlier this year in PLOS ONE on social media use issues and found that only 4.5% were at risk. But many of us do use the platform in a negative way when we engage in lengthy arguments, scroll through social media to delay work or avoid contact with loved ones, or get upset about the news we read, the comments people leave on our posts. … , or even the number of likes we get. Skipping exercise and choosing unhealthy foods because of your social media time can negatively impact performance, relationships, emotional well-being, and even physical health.
Who here had trouble falling asleep because they were arguing with a stranger on social media right before bed?
Again, I don’t recommend people delete their accounts. There are reasons to stay connected.
In a study published earlier this year in the journal Psychological Science, Andrew Przybylski and co-author wrote, “Evidence suggests that moderate digital use is not harmful in nature (for well-being) and can be beneficial in a connected world.” The study involved 235 English teenagers to test the validity of the Goldilocks hypothesis. Is there a “right” amount of social media use?
Research has shown that using a digital screen for one to two hours a day is okay, but more hours begins to have a “measurable, albeit slight negative effect” on mental well-being, with more time in front of the screen increasing the negative effect. …
How can we get back to useful use, avoiding unnecessary scrolling and useless arguments with people we don’t need opinion?
How to reduce your social media activity
1. Remove all social networking applications from your phone , recommends Andrew Przybylski. “Make it so that you have to use the browser and not let it save your password. Make sure that every time you check, you have to consciously try to log in. “
2. Create your own rules for using social media . The peculiarity of Facebook is that we do not pay attention to how often we use it. There are many online tools out there that will let you track this, but I’m a bit of a luddite who only uses about 10% of the functionality of his GPS watch. Since using Facebook first thing in the morning, with meals and right before bed is indicative of frequent use, here are some new rules for me:
- Every day I will work an hour before checking any social media. After that, I get 15 minutes of free time on Facebook, not related to work.
- When I finish my work day, I will spend another 15 minutes using Facebook, not related to work.
After that, I log out and don’t use it until the next morning, after I have completed an hour of work. And no more scrolling through meal times.
3. Avoid arguments. Mark Griffiths, whom I mentioned earlier, has a popular psychology blog and said he is often abused on the Internet. I have been known for writing a few opinionated opinions about the platform, and have encountered backlash as well.
“You have to know that whatever you write, someone will not like it,” said Griffiths. Even if you’re not a professional writer, with every post or comment on Facebook, you open yourself up to criticism. But there is no law that says you must fight or fight back.
It’s always best to ignore the “enemies”, but I know Facebook can be especially difficult if someone invades your wall. You can delete messages and ban them; they do not have the right to broadcast their opinion in your electronic space. But if you have anything to say, Sir Winston Churchill’s method may come in handy.
Churchill was a master at the sarcastic joke that someone was put in place without further involvement. I once wrote an article about dark chocolate and its supposedly “super” qualities. In response to one person’s rectally uncomfortable tirade, I only answered, “Eat snickers.”
Even so, with a sarcastic acuteness, you run the risk of being sucked into yourself. If someone spews vitriol, there is nothing better than pretending they don’t exist.
4. Limit news sources. As for my need for news, Andrew Przybylski said the problem with social media is that it doesn’t feel like watching a show on Netflix where it ends up being drunk. You can do infinite scrolling. So I’m going to constrain the scroll circle. My friend Kathleen provides excellent information on the state of American and Canadian politics at all times. I’m going to get a fix from her and Dan Rather and skip the rest.
For more in-depth tips on how to “digital detox,” Mark Griffiths wrote an article for Psychology Today that outlines several steps you can take to make it easier to restrict social media. These include not using the phone as an alarm clock (my phone never enters the bedroom), buying a wristwatch so you don’t have to use the phone to check the time, setting specific times for email / social media use, setting specific times for to not look at any screens and find a non-screen action to “fill the void”.
Another piece of advice from Mark was to make it public that you intend to spend less time on platforms like Facebook. That is why I wrote this article.
Good luck trying to get offline more often, but before you do, I’d appreciate it if you could follow my Facebook page .
James Fell writes health and fitness columns for the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune. His work has been featured in TIME, The Guardian, NPR, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, AskMen and many others. His first book, Lose it Right , was published by Random House Canada in 2014. He lives in Calgary, Canada with his wife, two children and an elderly bearded dragon. His blog www.BodyForWife.com is full of profanity and should never be read by anyone.