I’m a Social Media Addict – Help me
Social media is the drug of choice for the millennial generation. Don’t believe it’s a drug? See if this describes you – compulsive need for social media, habit forming computer or posting actions, persistent use of technology in any form. Check, check, check – yep you’re a social media addict. Need further proof? Test your position – go one month without a single text, tweet, like, favorite, love, FB or Instagram post, banish Snap Chat, cell phones, anything else digital and see if you remain sane. Most likely you’ll go into withdrawal. You’ll be curled up in a chair somewhere in a cold sweat, begging for one hit of anything connected to the cloud.
“Okay,” you say, “so I’m addicted. Now what?” In the technology world you can’t go backwards. There is no use in saying that I’m going to go back to the way I used to do things before I got addicted. You’re not going to drive anywhere without your cell phones as people used to do in the good old days. You’re not going to go to a restaurant and snap that plate of food and send it over to your buddies around the globe. It’s simply not going to happen. Your best bet to calm the social media beast that is consuming all your time day and night – ding after ding is to curtail usage. Do less of what you love until you have better balance over your life.
The social media and technology creator’s want you addicted so that they can advertise to you day and night, night and day.
The more you’re on line, the more you will see their ads saying buy me. We are in a world driven by advertisers. They don’t care if your family suffers because you’re clicking away from them or that you can’t get any peace because you are constantly connected to what is happening every second of your life. If you want to take control, slowly begin to do less.
Here are five things you can do to help curve the social media demon:
- Reduce or turn off notifications.
- Limit posting to a specific number of times a day.
- Give yourself one day a week where you find something else to do beside engaging with anything electronic.
- Develop another habit like reading, cooking or sports.
- Stop replying to people instantly. Use delaying to recondition your mind that everything is not so important to address now.
Life is more than technology and being on the cutting edge of what is going on in the now moment. Life is about building relationships. Though we can’t go back to the way things were, we can still bring forward the best of old times. Take a minute away from your social media and write a honest to good love letter to your lover, take a walk in the park with your dog instead of posting or leave the cell phone in the house while you go out with friends and enjoy a good old fashioned picnic. Learning to control social media this way gives you the best of the old world and the new world. Good luck.
Read more posts by Linda Leon, a marketing professional and entrepreneur. Feel free to contact her at www.thewealthsolutions.com.
JenningsWire.com is created by National Publicist, Annie Jennings of the NYC based PR Firm, Annie Jennings PR. Annie Jennings PR specializes in marketing books for getting authors booked on radio talk show interviews, TV shows in major online and in high circulation magazines and newspapers. Annie also works with speaker and experts to build up powerful platforms of credibility and influence.
