24 Hours Without Social Media: Could You Do It?
“I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening”.
Does this sound like you? When you want to check up on your friends, do you use Facebook? When you want to find out what pre-teens think is cool, is it Twitter that tells you it has been and always will be Justin Bieber?
The fact is, rather than use the phone or walk to a friend’s house, we log on and plug in. It’s gotten to the point where we don’t even think about it anymore. But what would happen if you had to abstain from social media, say, for an entire day? University of Maryland students recently found out.
This March, the University of Maryland’s International Center for Media & the Public Agenda challenged 200 undergraduates to avoid using all forms of social media, including Facebook, text messaging, laptops and iPods, for 24 hours. After the 24 hours, students were asked to anonymously, and truthfully, blog about their experiences. The findings? American college students are addicted to social media. Without it, they simply struggle to function.
Quickly, here are the study’s top 5 findings:
- Students use literal terms of addiction when describing their social media dependence.
- Students liken going without media to going without family and friends.
- Students get news in disaggregated ways, such as via friends.
- 18-21 year olds are constantly texting and on Facebook.
- Students can live without TVs and newspapers, but not iPods.
Many students attempted to justify their withdrawal symptoms, claiming that abstaining from such devices causes logistical problems, or that social media devices are favorite forms of entertainment. For example, one student clarified that his iPod is a “way to zone out of everything and everyone”, likening it to “getting amped up like a football player before a game”.
Harmless enough. However, even after short periods of abstinence, students began to describe the isolation and inability to contact the world as “almost unbearable”, signs indicative of a greater problem, namely, that social media has ingrained itself in the very being of these students, to the point where physical and mental withdrawal symptoms begin to surface.
Considering it’s exponentially growing popularity, social media “addiction” will likely be a topic explored by a number of entities in the near future. But until then, we’ll stick by the time-tested rule: moderation is always key!
[Via The Washington Post]
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