In today’s world everything is digital we are completely drowned towards digital addiction. It’s very common to get caught up in ringing of notifications, endless scrolling on social media and engaging games for temporary entertainment, no wonder we all find ourselves stuck in the illusional world created by social media. It was okay till, we were understanding the difference between Reel and Real world and because of that our relationships, professional life and overall wellbeing is affected.
In this blog we’ll talk about the idea of digital addiction, the reason it happens, the symptoms of digital addiction and the consequences of it. We’ll also discuss that how we can identify if we are preoccupied by virtual world and if are then what can we do to create a balance between offline and online lives.
Table of Contents
The Rise of Digital Addiction:
Digital addiction, also known as internet addiction or screen addiction, is a type of addiction in which the user does very excessive use of digital devices and social media even after knowing that it has severe negative effect on our physical and mental health, relationships and day to day life. This condition has worsened in a few years because of the excess use of smartphones and easy access to smartphones and social media.
Nowadays everyone is totally dependent on technology and preoccupied by virtual world. This is very common that’s a study was held, and results were shocking:
| Addiction | Age Group | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| Internet Addiction | College Students | Almost 20% |
| Technology Addiction | School going | Almost 11% |
| Internet Addiction | Adults | Almost 60% |
Causes of addiction to technology:
There are many different reasons why we are so addicted to technology and social media. The few reasons are:
- Release of Dopamine: Dopamine is a kind of Feel-good hormone. When we watch a lot of screen and social media, we release this happy hormone. And Thats why the more we consume it the more we crave it.
- Social Validation: On social media if you post something and get instant answers, likes and comments and if they are according to your expectations, you get addicted to post on social media for validation. It becomes a habit to post on social media for validation.
- A temporary escape: In today’s stressful world, social media acts as a reliving patch on the wounds caused by the harsh world. It helps to escape the real world and its problems for a short time.
- FOMO: Fear of missing out is the biggest nowadays, because even if we want to be far from social media but the notifications make it impossible to that. And thus, we get hooked to social media though it’s not benefitting us in any way.
How to know if you are digitally addicted?
It’s very easy to tell if you are addicted digitally. Given below are some points by which you can confirm if you are a prey of Digital addiction.
- Doomscrolling: The excessive scrolling on social media on content like reels is the reason of decrease in attention span of most of us. Being on social media for long time can be dangerous for our mental and physical health.
- Responsibility Negligence: We become so engaged in social media that we forget our basic responsibilities. Alot of us start neglecting our school, college and even office work because the more screen time makes us lethargic without doing anything.
- The loop of Anticipation: Using social media is like winning a lottery, chances of winning is less but still the hope of winning makes us take many chances. Similarly, social media also makes us post on that because we don’t care about the result but we the procedure.
- Loss of sleep: We get so involved in digital addiction that we start to sacrifice our sleep for watching mobile, scrolling reels or playing video games.
What are the results of Digital Addiction:
Digital addiction can have many different effects on different fields of life. It can affect our relationships with people around us, it can even affect us both physically and mentally. Some consequences of digital addiction are given below.
- Mental health problem: Digital addiction plays a major role in being the reason behind a lot of mental health problems like anxiety, depression and even lack of confidence.
- Disturbance in sleep pattern: All these notifications and the blue light from screen can affect our sleep patterns.
- Problems in Relationships: The main reason why people are not happy with the person they are with is because the person on chat is totally different. We are faking our personality totally to be liked by someone, that’s why relationships are hard to maintain nowadays.
- Affect in physical health: While scrolling we a sitting continuously we can lead to many physical problems like obesity, hearth attacks and other diseases.
- Decrease in our productivity: Spending, more than 2 hours can never make us productive. This can be a hurdle when we enter in corporate world.
How to maintain a healthy balance between reel and real world?
To maintain a healthy balance between reel and real world we can try:
- You should start taking a few hours without any digital device and increase that time from time to time. This way you can be less addicted to your devices.
- Set limits on all your social media accounts. This can be a reminder for you to stop using social media, and after some time you may start to limit it on your own without reminder.
- Go to social gatherings with friends and family. Try not to use your phones there and have conversations with new people. Try to know about them and tell them about yourself this will boost your confidence.
- Replace your 1 hour of scrolling to 1 hour of gym or yoga or any other activity which you like.
Conclusion:
Digital addiction has become the biggest concern nowadays. It affects us both physically and mentally and even affect our relationships and even our day-to-day life completely. If we know what the reasons of our digital addiction are and what are the changes, we see when we are digitally addicted and we can do to maintain a healthy balance between reel and real world. Remember, it’s very important to look around yourself and help those who suffer from digital addiction and help them to overcome it and if you are suffering from it try to do mindful activities.
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