Science behind Social media Addiction

Rudyard Kipling in his essay Values of Life says this;

“Youth is the season of hope, ambition, and uplift… if they are incommunicable to fellows, youth can be a season of great depression, despondencies, doubts, and wavering”.

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The world today is shaped in such a way to kindle the feelings and emotions of human beings, there are adequate stimulus are there to control it. The predominant element that controls us is Smartphone, every advertisement, eye appealing products, or even a post from our favorite celebrity (Male/Female) provides us a sense of pleasure for a short period of time. However in a larger or in futuristic perspective it leaves us in emptiness, and waste of time. When a person frequently engage himself in such mere pleasure on social media, it creates the appetite for craving more. Corporates and other bureaucrats hooks us with constant supply of entertainment and makes money out of our addiction. Therefore if one doesn’t have any vision for his self-growth he will become an object of puppet.

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The smartphone and social media keeps you entwined in their surveillance by constant stream of what you desire. (You get results, random advertisements based on your search in Google and receives posts on social media based on the post you like) You will lose your free will eventually, because you search for happiness in a puzzle (Social media) which is that programmed to keep you vanished. The minimum time spent on smartphone per day is 5 Hours. Which means you are in servitude of social media during that hours. Nowadays young minds are locked in a house, some are doing part-time job to support family. But largely young students are spending time idly on playing games, surfing on internet, and even some other sort of addictiveness. I find this could cause a sense of missing in future.

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Luckily, there is a way to regain control over your impulses by doing some healthy best practices. All sort of addiction is happens because of the Dopamine (Brain chemical associated with wanting triggered by new rewards) in our brain. If we clearly understand the science behind it, we get our realization. Dopamine is triggered by new rewards, that’s why the first scope of everything like ice-cream, Panipoori, etc. is heaven. A few minutes after your focus changes and you start thinking of next work. However you still love those food but you don’t feel it as much because your brain doesn’t see it as new. Your mind started looking for the next exciting thing on the move. This phase is applicable to mobile video games, Facebook, and Instagram because it was created in such a way to activate dopamine continuously.

You may start the day as fresh and want to make something good and productive, but at the end of the day you realize how you spent hours of time needlessly scrolling social media and checking notifications. All you got is a feeling of wasting time, thus things that used to excite you no longer excite you like they used to. So, if you avoid those dopamine stimulating things for certain period you will be able to navigate your brain into looking for something useful for your health and mind. Automatically the addictive behaviour and negative impulse will be reduced.