Social Media Addiction.

In this article you will learn:
How do social networks harm
Why do we become addicted
How can I use social networks with benefit
8 steps to defeat addiction to social networks

For many, the social world has become a substitute for real life. People spend endless hours watching updates on the pages of others, often even strangers. Social networks were originally conceived as a field for opportunities and new acquaintances, but turned into a real pit of addiction, like alcoholism or gambling.

How do social networks harm
isolation from social life;
loss of time and procrastination;
Depression due to constant comparison of oneself with others;
harmful, oppressive content;
informational dependence;
the inability to resist advertising develops;
constant emotional stress due to the speed of changing content, neurosis.

Why do we become addicted
In addition to vague phrases about escaping to another reality from our life problems, let's take a closer look at why they become dependent on social networks, how this affects our brain and our psyche.

During the endless updating of news feeds on the network, we irritate pleasure centers in the brain. You see beautiful pictures - the brain reacts. You send a request for the desire for new content - the social network instantly satisfies it. Also, pleasure centers are annoyed every time you see a notification about like, new subscribers, nice comments and new messages. That is, it works in the literal sense as a drug - without fail. But if narcotic substances and alcohol are censured in society, social networks have become an integral part of it, so addiction is much more difficult to resist.

Response speed and accessibility is another negative brain training. In social networks, we quickly get short information that immediately replaces each other. It is like clicking seeds or nail biting, in a sense, smoking: monotonous obsessive movements, which our motor apparatus and brain are getting used to. Have you noticed that when it becomes embarrassing or alarming, you reach for the phone, start randomly switching from one page to another, sometimes without even grasping the meaning?

How can I use social networks with benefit
Of course, social networks have a lot of advantages. In fact, it is due to these advantages that more and more people are registered in social networks and become regular users. In social networks, you can develop a business or promote your services. You can find new useful connections - most likely, in the world of social networks you will definitely find a couple of connecting acquaintances. You can find old friends and classmates (for this, Facebook was created!).

How to overcome addiction to social networks

1. Do not pick up the phone after waking up and before going to bed
   The habit of starting and ending the day by flipping Instagram feeds is a very bad habit. You cannot tune in to such images for a day and take stock, as a result, you lose a lot in productivity. This habit suffers from well-being and the nervous system. People falling asleep with the phone have a bad, shallow sleep, they have a higher risk of developing insomnia.

To give up the phone at this time and create such additional pauses in your life is the main condition for getting rid of addiction and dependence on social networks.

1. Add time on social networks to your schedule
   When creating a daily routine, consider the time on social networks. You’ll still be logging into them, but so that social networks stop eating up time, set aside a clear period in the bottom for them. For example, twice a day for half an hour.

2. Avoid social networks with "empty" content
   Useful and entertaining videos can also “eat up” a lot of time. And not so useful to be. But it is better to avoid useless or harmful content. Do not go to pages that are not useful. Unsubscribe from “empty” bloggers and exit the communities whose posts are not meaningful. This will seriously reduce the negative impact of social networks on your productivity and psyche.

3. Replace the bad habit with a useful one.
   When you reduce the time spent online, you will have a lot of free time that needs to be filled with something. The insidiousness of dependence is that it will by all means try to drag you back into its networks. There will be a lot of free time, tormenting boredom and an obsessive desire to spend an hour or two again after flipping through a news feed with useless materials may come. To avoid this, fill in the gaps in the schedule with a useful habit, for example, reading educational literature or learning a foreign language. Today there are many exciting language learning applications that help you learn in a playful way. This is a great alternative to social networks, because such applications are just as exciting.

1. Stop posting in real time
   A bad habit of the modern world is to post photos and signatures in real time: reports on trips, visits to exhibitions, meetings with friends and even meals. If your hand constantly reaches for the phone when something interesting happens - this is an alarming bell. So you lose the fullness of immersion in the moment and stop rejoicing. You will always evaluate your life regarding how many likes it will gain (if metaphorically). But you will never be satisfied in that case.

2. Use social media as a vehicle for valuable thoughts.
   Write rarely, but with meaning. Take really important notes, share valuable thoughts. Social networks provide great opportunities. They have long become serious competitors to the media, if they have not overtaken them. Influence your audience to the maximum. Track your development. Share valuable information and engage others in civic engagement. It's much better than just uploading a photo of your lunch, isn’t it?

3. Remove unnecessary applications from your smartphone
   Hundreds of notifications and the endless temptation to log in again with a social network for no reason and stay long - this is the result of countless applications on your smartphone. Just delete them. minimum accessibility is a serious step towards freeing yourself from addiction.

4. Clean the list of friends and groups
   Unsubscribe from strangers. Get out of the useless groups. Especially if they clog your feed with viral content, ads, negative settings. Just protect yourself from this. Leave as friends only those with whom you really communicate, and among groups - those where there is material that is needed for development or work. So you not only minimize useless “sticking” in social networks, but also protect yourself from the tons of negativity that social networks are teeming with in comments and communities.

Everyone for himself has the right to choose how to live. You yourself decide which social network to use, how much time to spend in it, with whom to communicate ... But if you feel the negative influence of social networks on yourself and want to correct the situation - do not be afraid and take the first step. You will not lose, but only gain!

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