Allowing teens and young adults to use social media is like giving them drugs and alcohol together. There is evidence that shows that the same part of the brain lights up for addict’s when they get their fix. And yet teens and young adults still continue using their addiction. According to Remus Runcan the author of the article Psycho-social risk of Facebook communication ‘It has been proven that smoking, drinking, and drugs can cause addiction because of the substances they contain'(Runcan n.p). This can be seen also in social media on how teens and young adults keep consuming the substances in the post. The similarities between social media and drugs addiction are the risk individuals ignore to continue the addiction, the influence it has on teens and young adults, and the reasoning for starting the addiction. Most of the individuals on social media networks are teens and young adults.
Many teens and young adults do not consider the risk they take for their addictions. When an individual decides to do drugs, they overlook the fact that the drug will affect them mentally and physically. One crazy risk many people do not consider is that doing this activity may kill them. This is for both social media users and drug users. They could crash their car by getting too high and overdosing or by checking a post they were tagged in. Another risk that drug users and social media users face is ruiningfriendships, marriages, and jobs. This is a risk because who wants to lose a friendship or marriage they have had for years or a great job opportunity all because they take time out of there day to sit back and relax. Teens and young adults may think that the risk is crazy and believe that it will not happen to them. But it could happen, may not be them exactly, but it will happen to someone they know.
According to Arbaaz Mushtaq, the author of the article An Overview of Empirical Evidence of Internet Addiction Disorder Among Adolescents, ‘ the internet addiction or internet addiction disorder (IAD) can have detrimental outcomes for young people that may require professional intervention'(Mushtaq n.p). Most addictions require professional intervention most commonly drug addicts.Try to envision not being able to check a post on social media. Now imagine a drug addict not being able to get their fix. In both situations, the individual may become angry, depressed, and even fidgety. They are so lost without there so-called addiction that they basically become ill. According to Andrew Rae the author of the article Silicon valley’s tax-avoiding, job-killing, soul-sucking machine ‘we’ve now seen abundant research indicating that social media platforms are making teens more depressed'(Rae n.p). This is with social media now just think about it without social media. Teens and young adults are so easily influenced by social media and by their peers. Social media and drugs can also go hand in hand. They influence teens and young adults to consider using drugs or help them receive drugs. Drug users may also consider joining certain social media outlets to help deal drugs or seek out their competition.
One addiction is creating and fueling the other addiction. Examples of this are them using the hashtag #420 for sale or # Stoner. Many may also seek out education on how to do drugs on some social media platforms such as YouTube and Google. This is making it way too easy for teens and young adults to do drugs and for drug dealers to influence teens to become rebels and do drugs. This can also lead teens and young adults to being subjected to peer pressure. Which in social media is a common place to find peer pressure besides in face to face communication.Some may question why or how an individual started their addiction. One reason an individual starts an addiction is because it was once considered popular or cool. An example of this is a teen seeing his or her favorite singer or actor smoking in a photo or video and the famous individual continues to smoke in real life. For social media, the individual usually begins using social media to continually see the famous individual they idealize. And this causes them to develop a bad habit of checking their apps to see if the famous person has posted anything later developing into an addiction.
‘ There are two reasons why people become addicted to something: ignorance (humans start doing something without taking into account the risk of becoming addicted) or Self-confidence (human reject the idea that it could happen to them)'(Runcan n.p). Many individuals do not want to be excluded or left out of anything this is now known as (FOMO) the fear of missing out (Kuss n.p ).Some may say that teens and young adults are not addicted to social media. In the article Social media network participation and academic performance in senior high school in Gnan, the author Daria Kuss states that ‘ a study conducted by Robert and Foehr (2008) in the united states about student extracurricular activity it states that. It did notaffect their productivity time. It just took up the student’s extracurricular activities'(Kuss n.p). However, this study was conducted back in 2008 this was when there were very few social media outlets. So yes, they may have just spent their spare time on social media, but now in 2017 there are multiple different apps available for teens and young adults to now spend more time consuming the post. Some popular apps are Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, and Tumbler. Some may also say that drug addiction is way different from being addicted to social media, but there is relatively no deafferents between them. The amount of time teens and young adults spend on social media is mind-numbingly crazy. The use of social media to sell drugs can be used against a teen or young adult in court to get a warrant signed and ultimately lead to their arrest.
Social media is just as addicting as drugs one point is that both have risk that people take to continue using the substance despite it being unhealthy for them or even dangerous. Individuals tend to ignore the risk mostly out of ignorance and just human nature of not reading the fine print of things and expecting the scenario to happen to them. Another point is the teens and young adults reasoning for starting the addiction. Ether to be declared being cool for doing it or to not miss out and experience the (FOMO) fear of missing out. Rae states that ‘If you don’t believe in the addictive aspects of platforms, ask yourself why American teenagers are spending an average of five hours a day glued to their internet-connected screens. The variable rewards of social media keep us checking our notifications as though they were slot machines, and research has shown that children and teens are particularly sensitive to the dopamine craving theseplatforms foster'(Rae n.p). Parents and adults should become stricter on their children about how much time they spend on social media and educate themselves on how to prevent their teens or young adults from becoming addicted to social media. When the parents and adults become educated on what their teens are invested in. They may help educate other adults and parents to help their teens out of social media addiction.
