Addiction of the 21st century

Alcohol. Tobacco. Drugs. All these addictions at some point in history were considered as part of  a successful life, as sign of being "cool". And in our century we got a new addiction that was impossible even 50 years ago - social media.

Ask yourself: how many times today your checked your Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/even your email? And how many time you actually got something useful or important out of there? We connect to the Internet even without thinking, automatically, and most of the time when we disconnect we can't remember what exactly we saw there. Can you remember the last post on Facebook you saw today? Or at least three you saw during the day that impressed you? I can't.

And what we mostly find in social media (except rare moments of really useful information)? Cute kittens, evil jokes, fake politics, someone else's lives. We lose ourselves in this huge stream of information. We try to follow other's lives so we forget about our own life. And if something is happening with us what people do the very first moment? Exactly, make a post to share with everybody that they still exist. The whole process is just an attempt to catch attention, to show that you're not worse than others.

And the problem is that in our contemporary society you barely can survive without being connected all the time. "I'll send you photos in Facebook. You don't check it? You don't even have a page there? How are you living?" - this is a exclamation we could hear several years ago, but now it is nearly impossible, everyone is online. You get some school/work announcements, you get updates of your favorite blogger/musician/artist, you keep in touch with your relatives/friends even if they are on the other side of the planet. It is great, of course, but then people become angry at you that you haven't checked your messages for 15 minutes (I have some friends like that).  Community around force you to keep connected every second, so it turns into a vicious circle: you can't disconnect because people around you want you to be connected and so you start to expect that other are connected all the time as you are.

Unfortunately, this addiction is still in phase of measurement of "coolness". People compare numbers of followers, likes, comments. If you don't post a photo every day you're considered boring. And it will never end. People will start to fight with this addiction (they've actually already started) but always there would be people who will "go high" after each moment being connected to the pipeline of social media. And when society is forcing you to do that it is much more difficult to stop. 

P.S. While writing this post I checked my Facebook and Instagram at least twice.

P.P.S. To make bad effect of overusing social media more science based here is a link with overview of several researches: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2017/06/30/a-run-down-of-social-medias-effects-on-our-mental-health/#47b37f832e5a