Empty scrolling : The new Smoking ...?!!!?

If you have made up your mind to click on this article while you’re on your mobile , Congratulations ! You still have a little too much command over your mind which is the reason you decided to understand some reality in this illusionary colourful world . Now, as you have started reading this , please give me another opportunity to congratulate as you read this completely . Here I not only discuss about the dark side of social media but will also try and defend “why social media makes sense” and at the end I’ll hopefully help you in finding out an equilibrium state of using social media.

Social media , of course tops the list of greatest inventions of twenty first century . Rather , it was supposed to be , but just as the saying “with great power comes great responsibility” goes it’s surely the irresponsibility that’s brought us to a situation where social media has made us feel lonely in spite of being connected with people from nook and corner of the world . But wait ! Whoseirresponsibility is this ? Is it if the companies or users ? Let’s find it out .

Social media is addictive not by chance , its designed to be such . It’s now not a secret there are specialised people in these companies who are hired to programme their app such that it initiates a great dopamine rush in our brain . But in the attempt of doing so , our brain’s software has also been programmed in such a way that we are always stuck to the screen . But , let’s now dive deep and understand the science behind addiction as we can succeed in finding a precise solution only when we know the root cause .

• Anticipation – a trap- The dopamine hit is not when we see a wonderful reel or we get a million likes , it’s actually when we imagine it ,anticipating the blissful outcome while we scroll or we post something . I was also shocked to find out that the same mechanism is used in casinos of Vegas which is known as the gambling capital of the world to keep the gamblers hooked to the game . Researches find that this magic of maybe releases as much dopamine as snorting cocaine.

                       I’m not here to make you scared with fear as there’s also brighter side of social media

                        coming up ..but using the word fear made me recall another reason for addiction

• The fear of being left out : when you are into a with four of your friends and all four of them start discussing something that you have no idea about . It makes you feel insecure and you decide to get indulged in that just to become one more sheep in the flock . In fact , this is how most of the people get into alcohol or smoking . So , all you need is the courage to be different , courage to be right and accept it bravely among your friends which makes you stand out among all other aspects of life .By now , it is clear that all our social media handles are just fake identities that we have branded ourselves just motivated by illusionary world and it is not by itself a joyful act .

This social media addiction has cost us a lot . Our attention is their profit . So , these apps always try to grab our attention by sending us those distracting notifications . And every time we just scroll through out those apps quickly for 2 minutes mechanically , it reduces our attention span and ability to concentrate whose direct impact is on the student community who are the backbone of this industry .