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Addiction To Social Media Addiction

analytical Essay
2067 words
2067 words
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Addiction to Social Media
Social media has become an extremely powerful and useful tool that enables people in a modern society to effortlessly interact and socialize with each other via the internet; however, there is an extremely dark and little known side of social media: addiction. Social media has the potential to become extremely addictive to its users. The addictive nature of social media may intensely interfere with users daily obligations in the real world, which may make a recovery process necessary in order to quell the powerful addiction.
First of all, there are several reasons as to why social media has the potential to be extremely addictive to users. Many believe that “as in the case of other types of addiction[s], there are …show more content…

In this essay, the author

  • Explains that social media has become an extremely powerful and useful tool that enables people in a modern society to effortlessly interact and socialize with each other via the internet. however, addiction can become extremely addictive to its users.
  • Explains that addiction to social media shares neurological features with other addictions such as substance and gambling addiction.
  • Explains that excessive use of social media triggers two key parts of the brain associated with rewards: amygdala, which is the integrative place for emotions, behavior, and motivation.
  • Explains that many forms of social media are often used excessively and have the potential to become addictive.
  • Analyzes how addiction to social media can interfere with a person's daily obligations by causing them to neglect important priorities of life, such as education, job or career responsibilities, face-to-face interaction, and family obligations.
  • Explains how social media addiction can be overcome through counseling, education, and a professional recovery program like the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints' family services addiction recovery program.
  • Explains the three main ways to break an unhealthy social media habit independently: take tech breaks, lurk less, and edit yourself.
  • Argues that social media addiction is not a legitimate addiction because it does not have the same physical or mental ramifications as other addictions.
  • Concludes that social media has developed into an extremely powerful tool enabling people in a modern society to socialize and interact with each other via the internet. however, it has the potential to cause its users to become highly addictive.

For example, having only five friends like or comment on a post is not nearly enough; it must be at least 50, but as soon as 50 people acknowledge the post, then the addict craves 100, and so on (“Social Media Addiction”). Once a person becomes addicted to social media, their self-esteem begins to depend on how many likes or comments that they receive on a particular post (“Social Media Addiction”). Recent findings show that addiction to social media shares some neurological features with other addictions, such as substance and gambling addictions (“Excessive Social Media Use”). Many experts believe that excessive use of social media “triggers two key parts of the brain associated with rewards: amygdala, which is the integrative place for emotions, behavior and motivation and striatum, part of the forebrain and a critical component of the reward system” (“Excessive Social Media Use”). Teenagers with addiction-like symptoms may "have a hyperactive amygdale-striatal system, which makes this 'addiction ' similar to many other addictions" (“Excessive Social Media Use”). Those with

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