Essay Example on Overloaded With Social Media: Effects on User Brain

Excessive use of social media has many effects on its users, where it overwhelms the users and leads to an overdrive of difficulties in the processing of information and other different tasks. Some of the things that might lead to a tired brain for most social media users are such as excess meetings and events to attend to, very many apps to deal with, and too many articles and emails to read and reply to before time reduces. A daily repeat of these activities can lead to a lack of focus in individuals, which eventually causes stress and anxiety.

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To deal with the effects of social media, one has to keep track of the way that they spend their time while focusing most of their attention on different activities that lead to stress and anxiety. People who spend two to three hours each day on social media where each of their free time is used up in different social media sites lose a lot of their precious time, which they would have otherwise used for more productive activities (Schlafman, 2016). The reason why social media causes a lot of wasted time is that the more an individual uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media sites, the more the articles to read and the people to interact with which causes people to have the urge to read and interact more on the sites for fear that they will miss out.

Another major reason that social media apps and sites leads to stress and anxiety is because of the constant thoughts running through the minds of the users concerning the next picture they will post, ignoring the people who are physically present to them, and escaping the reality of life through flooding their brains with ways of living a completely different life than they do (Schlafman, 2016). Millions of individuals are hooked to social media with a report showing that 350 million individuals are hooked to Facebook. The high number of addicted users causes mental health issues and, if not dealt with at the early stages, leads to depression and anxiety.

An effective method to deal with social media addiction is the addicts detoxing from all types of social media sites and apps for some time. This step is not as easy as it may seem for social media addicts because they feel a sense of loneliness, fear of missing out, boredom, and depression (Schlafman, 2016). However, the peace of mind, as well as the free time it offers, is worth the risk. The addicts can achieve this by deleting all social media apps on their phones and logging out of every social media site. The heavy reliance on social media for certain information also poses as a threat to the extreme users for they are unable to acquire the most important information they have been receiving from social media. They feel a huge void in their normal lives, and without total persistence and a will to change, most of them reinstall the social media apps and login to the sites before the end of the first week.

Within a time of positively dealing with the urge to reach out to the phone and post something on social media or take pictures, the individuals search for other traditional ways to get information, and this slowly transforms their addiction to a lack of desire to use their phones. Their phones slowly transform from being personal devices to work devices, which is a fascinating result for most social media addicts (Schlafman, 2016). The anxiety and previous behaviors slowly fade, and even though they are disconnected from the online world, their stress levels reduce dramatically, and they develop a better way of communicating with other people. Life without social media is very enjoyable and productive.

Changes Made

The voice of the blog was changed from the first person to the third person who helped to generalize all social media addicts. Most of the tenses were changed from past tense to present continuous tense to show that the effects of excessive addiction to social media and the methods that can be used to regulate the addiction are effective even in this time. The blog is also quite long, and only the most important elements were picked from the blog for summarizing the main ideas of social media addiction and how it can be controlled.

Reference

Schlafman, S. (2016). I am a Social Media Addict, and I Quit for a Month. Here's my Story. Retrieved 12 December 2019, from https://medium.com/personal-growth/i-am-a-social-media-addict-and-i-quit-for-a-month-heres-my-story-15aa37a25228