Social Media Addiction and the Cure

“I am using FaceBook for chatting only, I am not addicted to it”, a conflictive sentence by a friend who was sticking her eyes in front of her mobile phones from the start of a group conversation. You should have been in that situation at least one time when everyone is talking except a person who keeps using social media during the period? In fact, most of the time talking to friends in university, they never actually talk to each other. Every effort in opening a conversation is killed because everyone is chatting with other, liking and uploading status on Facebook or Instagram. It is awkward to see how many young people today socializing on FaceBook more than in real life.

3.1 hours is average hours of using social media by Vietnamese people according to Chabrol in 2015. Of course, this is just an average, there are still many Vietnamese individuals spend the rest of their free-time surfing FaceBook and other social media platforms. In UK, a statistic shows that 26% of people prefer communicate with friends through online or device than face-to-face method according to Daily Mail in 2010. Another research conducted by Yazino and Opinium also shows that 11% of people prefer staying at home and using social media rather than meeting their friends on weekend. You can see clearly that people now are wasting their time socializing on social media instead of socializing in real life. It is because social media provides people the sense of belongingness, more entertaining activities, and a more comfortable chance to show their own identities. This idea is supported by Cohen in 2015 that the main reasons that people prefer using FaceBook, Instagram or other social media platforms: the sense of being close to their friends and family, keeping track with latest  news and events, keeping them busy, entertaining, and to reveal their own identities and opnions.

How can we stop being addicted to social media? After talking with some friends about the negative effects of social media, showing them the some videos about those effects (Example: Video 1, Video 2, etc), one had limited using FaceBook the next day, the others continued. That guy obviously experienced cognitive dissonance in a highest level and had to reduce it immediately by limiting the frequency . In fact a lot of people have experienced the same feeling with that guy when they recognise the negative effects and dissonance-arousing materials. So, how can cognitive dissonance be used to stop social media addiction?

 A little bit information about cognitive dissonance, it is defined by Festinger in 1957 as a psychological discomfortable feeling aroused when there is an inconsistent pair of cognition, belief, behavior or attitude. When people experience cognitive dissonance, they try to reduce it by giving rationalizations, the excuses, or reject the offensive contents. However if the cognitive dissonance reaches the highest level, people tend to change their belief, attitude or behavior or simply quit doing it in order to feel comfortable. A study of Johnson in 1968 illustrates that if a person endorse fewer or reject rationalizations of addict, they tend to quit or never become addict. Just like the above guy who reaches the highest level of cognitive dissonance when he watches the video, he limits the time using FaceBook and nearly quits using it. He has rejected all the rationalizations of social media addicts to feel comfortable. If you do not reject rationalizations of addicts and put efforts in quitting it, you obviously cannot stop addicting to social media, or anything else, just like David Schneider in this article “Is being addicted to social media such bad thing?”. He admits he is still addicted to social media because he has not put his effort in quitting it and still endorse excuses of addicts.  

To conclude, social media addiction has caused many problems with adults today. We are not socializing with each other, we are isolating ourselves from the society. Therefore, to stop the addiction, we should raise the level of dissonance to the highest level by watching, reading or listening dissonance-aroused materials, then put effort to stop doing it. Moreover, we must reject all rationalizations of the social media addicts to concentrate on treat ourselves for this addiction.