The idea of \u201csocial media addiction\u201d (yeah, let\u2019s put that in quotes) is one which makes no sense.<\/p>\n
As Mike Masnick at Techdirt\u00a0observes:<\/p>\n
Over the last decade or so, there\u2019s been something of an\u2026 well\u2026 addiction to calling any sort of overuse of a product an addiction. So we\u2019ve seen\u00a0email addiction,\u00a0web addiction,\u00a0online porn addiction,\u00a0video game addiction,\u00a0internet addiction, and\u00a0mobile phones or other gadget addictions\u00a0among other things.<\/p>\n
When you dig deeper, nearly all of these \u201ctechnological addictions\u201d don\u2019t really appear to be\u00a0addictions<\/em>\u00a0to the technology, but rather a\u00a0symptom<\/em>\u00a0of some other issue (such as depression) that manifests itself by focusing an inordinate amount of time on some technology. Focusing too much on the symptom, by falsely labeling it an addiction, could lead to poor treatment, as the focus is on treating the symptom, rather than the actual problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Ironic, then, that social media consultant Amy Porterfield who \u201csees past the hype\u201d (according to\u00a0her about page)\u00a0wrote a post\u00a0at Social Media Examiner titled:\u00a0 Study Highlights Growing Social Media Addiction.\u00a0 In it, she shared the details of a study by Retrevo Gadgetology which highlights \u201csocial media addiction.\u201d\u00a0 And it\u2019s as silly and \u201chyped up\u201d as any of the addictions highlighted above by Mike.<\/p>\n
It misses the point entirely to even use the phrase \u201csocial media addiction.\u201d\u00a0 Both Retrevo Gadgetology and SME hurt their credibility to\u00a0 say this.\u00a0 Sure, some of the items in the article such as checking Facebook in the middle of the night could be considered compulsive behavior.\u00a0 But that would be a manifestation of a real problem and not the actual problem in and of itself.\u00a0 It\u2019s a symptom, not a cause.<\/p>\n
The idea of framing technology as addiction is sensationalistic and done to grab headlines, pageviews and links.\u00a0 It plays perfectly into the fear-driven media culture of the last two decades.<\/p>\n
Todd Essig, Ph.D.,\u00a0 supervising psychoanalyst at the William Alanson White Institute highlights the dangers of this spread of misinformation:<\/p>\n
Making \u201cInternet addiction\u201d an official diagnostic category is just wrong on so many levels, including, I believe, making it more difficult to get the right kind of help to those who have actually become painfully stuck online. Many people are turning from life lived to life online and they need help, but real help for real problems, not newly-minted addictions.<\/p>\n
By sanctioning behavioral addictions the new DSM opens the diagnostic door to the full menu of confessional daytime TV problems: gambling, shopping, eating, playing World of Warcraft, visiting porn sites, chatting online, having sex with dozens of women with teased blonde hair (hello Tiger), getting too many tattoos, hoarding newspapers (addicted to print!), or whatever else comes along. Who knows, should the political tide turn Republican Senators might successfully plead they were not ruining the country, they were just suffering from \u201cAnti-American Filibuster Addiction Disorder.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medically sanctioning the category of \u201cbehavioral addictions\u201d also changes how we will think about freedom and responsibility. Making bad choices, developing destructive habits, and attempting solutions to problems in living that then become serious problems themselves will all become less important as the locus of responsibility shifts from the person doing something to the something being done.<\/p>\n
\u2026.Additional research, which is almost always good to do, will not help determine whether or not \u201cInternet addiction\u201d qualifies as a behavioral addiction. Such research will never be able to clarify whether what people are doing with technology qualifies as a behavioral addiction, unlike research about something like gambling, because of what I call the \u201cEssig Uncertainty Principle.\u201d The principle states that\u00a0\u201cbecause technology develops so much faster than research gets done, research into the psychology of technology always makes claims about what people used to do and not what they do now.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0Consequently, all the Internet behaviors being studied as possible \u201cnon-substance addictions\u201d will have long since been replaced by the next big thing by the time all the research is done.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Indeed.\u00a0 When qualified psychoanalysts are balking at the notion of technology as addiction, it puts into perspective how much you should trust those propagating it without comprehension.\u00a0 Let me highlight that a few data-points uncovered by a survey of 1,000 people (as is the data being reported by SME) is hardly the rigor done by psychoanalysts to gain a scientific understanding of behavioral disorders.<\/p>\n
Some other stats from the article don\u2019t even point to addiction:<\/p>\n
\n\n
- 56%: Social media users check Facebook at least once a day.<\/li>\n
- 12%: Social media users check Facebook every couple of hours.<\/li>\n
- 40%:\u00a0 Respondents who said they didn\u2019t mind being interrupted for a message.<\/li>\n
- 32%:\u00a0 Respondents who said using the sites was not off limits while eating a meal.<\/li>\n
- 7%: Respondents who said they\u2019d check out a message during an intimate moment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n
First of all, why \u201csocial media users?\u201d\u00a0 What does that even mean?\u00a0 Why not just call them people?\u00a0 That aside, these additional data points point not to addiction, but to a shifting of behavior.\u00a0 You could just as easily make the argument we suffer from \u201ccell phone addiction\u201d if you were to conduct a study looking at how we allow our cell phones to permeate our lives.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll second Mike, let\u2019s hope common sense prevails and media\/bloggers stop slapping the addiction label on everything without actual validity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The idea of \u201csocial media addiction\u201d (yeah, let\u2019s put that in quotes) is one which makes no sense. As Mike … <\/p>\n