Some people are addicted to social media. Many people are not necessarily addicted, but they aren’t far off. If you constantly need to check your devices to make sure you don’t miss an important notification, then you have a problem. If you spend hours every day consuming content on several platforms, you have a problem.
But this is not just your fault. You may think that you spend too much time on social media because you don’t have enough willpower or discipline. That’s not necessarily true – or, not entirely.
The reason why you are drawn to social media is because it was engineered to have this effect on you. The more time you spend on these platforms, the more money they can make. The more you use it, the more data they can collect on you and the more profit they can generate. So these platforms were created to be habit-forming3 or maybe even addictive9.
These platforms are using your psychology and basic instincts against you. So naturally, you end up hooked on them. You spend more and more time browsing, scrolling and sharing. And you probably don’t do this because you are constantly learning or growing while you’re liking random posts.
You’re just being distracted from your life. Surely, sometimes you enjoy spending time on social media. Of course, that’s also part of the design. Otherwise, you would never return. But this doesn’t mean that social media isn’t trying to get you hooked.
Think about all the time you could devote to something else if you stopped using social media all the time. You could learn a new language, read more books, write your own book, get in shape, work on your relationship, start a business and so on. Do you really want to just spend all that time on social media? I doubt it.