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If we wait until we are ready we will be waiting for the rest of our lives.

Lemony Snicket (via mobilesavage)

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Same. A cartoon by Kaamran Hafeez, from 2015.

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Social Media, Addictive or Addiction?

      Picture this, you arrive home after a long day of school or work. You sit down on your couch and what do you do next? Pick up a book, your laptop, or possibly your phone? If you chose the first option I commend you for being different from the norm. If you chose the other two options, congratulations you’re just like the other 95% of the population (just kidding… but not really). Choosing technology in a technological world is not something to be ashamed of, and neither is logging on to Facebook or Instagram to check out what your friends have been doing all day. It is in our human nature to want to be social and interact with other individuals.” Humans are highly social beings. We like to be surrounded by friends and share our personal experiences with others. The recent appearance of various social networking tools, and their adoption at a virtually explosive rate, nicely illustrate the strong and fundamental human desire for social belonging and interpersonal exchange.” (Vrtika) But dedicating too much of our time to social media can be detrimental to our health. Have you ever felt yourself having addictive tendencies when it comes to social media? If you have, you’re not alone, because social media use is ever-growing and is very common among the millennial generation. Social media does a great job of keep us in the loop and connecting us with friends, but social media can also lead to addiction, affect our overall happiness and self-confidence, as well as be very damaging to our relationships. I will begin to explore the chemical affects social media has on our brains, the studies that show it may be an addiction, the way it affects our everyday lives, and how it effects our real-life relationships.

               To start off, I would like to defend all of the social media users out there. We use the internet for good reasons. One major use of social media that I found is to connect with family, whether they are across the country or a 30-minute drive from your home. I personally can relate to this as my entire family lives 700 plus miles away and I am constantly checking on what my little sister is doing or where my parents went for the weekend. Facebook is the best outlet for keeping up with the older generations such as your Aunt Diane, or maybe even your Grandma. Another benefit of social media is the quick replies that we get. Not everyone has an iPhone and using Facebook messenger makes it very easy to communicate quickly with your cousin in Africa or your fellow classmate when working on a group project. Sharing images via social media is a great way to let your friends experience something that you might have done or accomplished and the acknowledgement of likes and comments can leave you feeling like you have many people who support and care for you. I know when I share a photo of me walking off a stage with a diploma I will be easily excited by all the compliments and praise that people will give me, I mean who wouldn’t?

               I would now like to talk about what is really going on inside of our heads when using social media. What kind of effects do social media have on our brain and what are the pros and cons. “According to a study by The Royal Society, the amount of Facebook friends you have can directly correlate with the amount of grey matter your brain has. Scientists measured the amount of grey matter, the part of the brain responsible for memory, emotions, speech, sensory perception, and muscle control, and “found that the more Facebook friends a person had, the larger the volume of their grey matter in several regions of the brain.” …..The exciting question now is whether these structures change over time—this will help us answer the question of whether the internet is changing our brains.”(Fontein) This example is just one of the many studies that have been done on the effects of social media. It seems that we are changing with social media and so much so that it is potentially changing the makeup of our brains! Talk about crazy.

Others studies have been done on the way likes and comments affect how we feel. The amount of likes you receive on a picture most of the time either makes you happy or kind of sad, the more likes, the happier you are and as you may know, Dopamine is the chemical released in our brain that causes happiness, which is also released when we get the notification that our post received “154 likes” (Tait).

               Similar to studying how “likes” and “comments” affect us with the release of dopamine, Neuroeconomist Paul Zak did a study where he “ran some experiments and MRI-based tests on participants while they used Twitter and Facebook, and found that the brain understands social media interactions and connections just as it would “real world” interactions through the release of a magical chemical called oxytocin. This is the same chemical released during the bonding between a mother and her baby, when we eat foods that we love, when we earn money, and when we do anything that gives us a sense of satisfaction and pleasure.” (Fontein) The fact that using social media can make us feel feelings that we would normally only get due to real life interactions can be quite scary. If we can make connections and feel satisfaction from behind a computer or phone screen, then why even bother to leave the comfort of your own home?

      Do we rely on these connections we make through social media while sitting on our buts at home? While doing research and interviews I encountered many people that admit to feeling quite addicted to social media. If you need to be checking your phone for Facebook or Snapchat updates every hour or so, can that be considered an addiction? Someone who goes outside to smoke a cigarette every hour is considered addicted, so what is the difference? Social Media can become so addictive that it starts to consume your time, distracting you from work that is supposed to be getting done or keeping you from focusing on the relationship you are trying to maintain with your significant other. Social media marketer Jason Thibeault wrote an awesome blog post titled "Why I just quit Facebook”, In this post (that blew up overnight), he talks about how Facebook was taking up too much of his time and taking him away from more important things, He was consumed by it and didn’t know how to quit it. “"Just imagine that Facebook is like a digital water cooler. I was drinking A TON of water every hour," he wrote. "Although I'm not a neuroscientist, I'd venture to say that what was happening was related to my Dopamine levels--when I was checking status updates on Facebook, my brain was rewarding itself with Dopamine; when I wasn't, and Dopamine levels dropped as a result, I started 'jonesing for a fix.'"

"So I quit," he wrote. "Cold turkey." (Augenbraun)

      Is quitting Cold turkey something that would be effective in treating social media addiction, or is there something more? Although social media addiction is not an accepted addiction by medical standards, Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) is very real and very much an addiction. It is said that IAD “ruins lives by causing neurological complications, psychological disturbances, and social problems."(Cash) This sounds just like what social media seems to do to frequent users based on even the smallest amount of studies that have currently been done. As more studies are done there will be more of a chance that Social Media Addiction becomes a real thing and then we will have to figure out how to treat it. Drugs? Therapy? Cold Turkey?

     Along with social media being addictive, it can also be depressing… and devastating to our personal image. Social media use can have some serious effects on our personal image, confidence, and expectations. As a woman, I can speak honestly about the constant struggle to live up to the standards of the pretty girls on Instagram or keeping up with the current trends so that you look good online. Time magazine wrote an article calling social media “a toxic mirr or”. “Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat deliver the tools that allow teens to earn approval for their appearance and compare themselves to others. The most vulnerable users, researchers say, are the ones who spend most of their time posting, commenting on and comparing themselves to photos.” (Simmons) I personally am not someone who cares much about what other people think, but whether we realize it or not, we all want to feel a little cool sometimes. In this modern technology savvy world, we have the opportunity to make ourselves out to be whatever we want to be seen as. You can post anything you want online, and you can even create your own persona that may be completely different than the person that you really are. The bad part about this is that sometimes seeing that your life is mediocre compared to some of the Instagram accounts you follow can be quite discouraging and sometimes even depressing. Many people get caught up in their social media worlds and are constantly striving for an impractical life or appearance.

    People whom are caught up in social media all of the time also have a hard time maintaining real life relationships. When you spend all your time online, you neglect the relationships that need actual attention compared to a measly like or comment on a Facebook post. (Bonanno) The biggest problem this causes is towards relationships with your significant other. Spending all your time online often brings up the question “Why can’t you just enjoy spending time with me?”. Spending time with someone while your phone is in your hand and Snapchat is pulled up, is not the same as without it. Dinner with your phone on the table so you can make sure you don’t miss an Instagram notification is not respectful and unacceptable. I am guilty of yelling at my boyfriend when he spends too much time on his phone and often find myself saying “Pay attention to me!!”. Another problem this causes is when people start to question why you are ignoring them, what could be so much more important online than what they are saying? Fights are bound to commence when social media consumes your time and insecurities begin to arise in relationships.

     So if you haven’t realized by now social media has a series of pros and cons regarding the use of it and it’s very hard to tell if there is more of one or the other because it really depends on the person. Everyone has their own reasons for using social media and after multiple interviews I’ve come to the conclusion that generally we all use it for communication, specifically with people we may not see every day. The occasional like or comment on our post makes us feel happiness due to the dopamine that is released in our brains. But is drowning ourselves in the various apps and websites worth the possible arguments we may or may not have with our significant others/friends/family? Probably not. Is stalking the girl who has 30k followers on Instagram worth damaging your self-image? Definitely not.

      So why do we indulge in these things that can be so damaging to our lives, well because like we’ve saw, they can also be quite rewarding. Getting to see all of the pictures from the trip to Mexico that your cousins just got back from, awesome. Your best friend who lives cross country sharing a Facebook invite to her 21st birthday in Vegas, hell yeah. So how do we keep the pros and cons of social media balanced and stray away from the possible social media addiction? My advice would be to indulge in moderation, don’t spend too much time online and focus on the real relationships that are most important to you. If you ever feel like you are becoming dependent on a certain social media platform just step back and take some time away from it, don’t quit cold turkey but just get your fix in small doses.                    

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The next 365 days of this lease will be as beautiful as these flowers

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I am the one thing in life I can control

I am inimitable I am an original

I am not falling behind or running late

I am not standing still I am lying in wait

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Uchisar, Nevsehir, Turkey

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Nirvana Live at The Paramount // October 31st, 1991

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Hello friends and followers! If you guys are into the rap scene you may know of Brooklyn based rappers Joey Bada$$ and Kirk Knight. Well as you can see by proera’s post, Kirk Knight’s debut album will be released on October 30th! I highly recommend, and if you would like a little taste here it is... 

https://youtu.be/khY3BGxSskg

Kirk Knight’s debut project, “Late Knight Special”, available October 30, 2015 

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One day

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Via Tezzamb.

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