Social Media Addiction

In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, Kelsey Hansen writes about social media addiction as something that her younger self struggled with, even though at the time she didn’t realize just how addicted she was becoming. She confesses to noticing that her attention span and mental capacity were suffering. She’d be working on her school assignments, but constantly and repeatedly interrupting her work, checking on her social media accounts. She cites Max Fisher’s book on the designed addictiveness of social media, titled “the Chaos Machine: the Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World”: Fisher talks about how social media platforms are designed to trigger a dopamine release in our brains. He writes, “Dopamine creates a positive association with whatever behaviors prompted its release, training you to repeat them.” This applies even to self-destructive behaviors. Parents, set borders and boundaries, and teach your kids to redeem their time.