We’re All Addicted
Hooked at Work
I was reading a powerful article on social media and addiction from Washington Post columnist Kate Woodsome and it got me thinking of how common addiction is now that we are all pinned to our devices. I work on my computer and phone every working hour of each day and social media is a big part of that now. It is a must that I do this to get my job done. Of course, that was not the job description of either writers or professors in the past. Just think—people used to write all their dissertations, articles, and books in ink! Nevertheless, this is the world that we live in. There is no opting out.
“Practically every dimension of the act of going on a device to engage with social media is addictive. And it’s addictive to everyone.”
Very few professions come without a tech or screen or social media requirement today. My friend’s brother is a field biologist and even he must continually plug his data into the ecology software that he shares with his lab. Moreover, his lab has to have a social media presence in order to be relevant and visible, something that is increasingly important to getting funding. Everyone working in the field, in this most traditionally analog nature-based job, is constantly generating content to post their happenings on social.
Hooked at Home
This ubiquity of the need to work with social media is partly why it is so hard to stop when work is over. There is an addictive quality to screens, scrolling, posting, viewing other people’s profiles—and to viewing one’s own profile. There is an addictive quality to reading in sprints, socializing in stints, to friending and maintaining friendships online. There is an addictive quality to liking, hating, seeing what others like and hate, seeing what’s trending, and to keeping up with trends. Practically every dimension of the act of going on a device to engage with social media is addictive. And it’s addictive to everyone.
In the wake of the Surgeon General’s statement on social media, I have been thinking about how my children’s childhoods and adolescence will be different from mine given the educational requirements to use devices and the social pressures to use social media before they even step into the world of work. Being the child of an addict, I was taught to avoid engaging in addictive behavior. But I won’t be able to tell them to do that because it won’t be realistic.
I want to figure out what I can tell them. What would you say to them? It is high time that we put our heads together to come up with some best practices for them and for us so that we don’t get strung out by social structures that were never in our best interest in the first place.