Social Media Addiction & Self Image

I spoke on this topic recently and excerpts from it are : 

Human seek addiction in a way to derive pleasure! Rock n roll, alcohol, hallucinogens, psychedelics, are some of the addictive means. Many of these are made out of bounds as social and culture wrongs. They may be called evils. Restrictions are placed and control are implemented making human seek something else. 

Social media is another way to continue the euphoric mood, derive pleasure and remained hooked. It is permitted, available to everyone and not policed. I often wonder: What would be the state of most of humanity without social media? It has triggered chatting, sharing, travel frenzy and countless copycat actions as pastime. The social media bustle has evolved as perhaps the greatest peacetime activity in recent times. It has surpassed meditation in the sincerity and intensity and drugs in its addictiveness. It seems to have helped calm the masses and keep them pre-occupied and content. 

A company had done a swift survey on its employees, using an Application which was knowingly installed into their mobile devices. The App recorded the "screen on and off" on each employee's mobile. The result showed that employees touched their phone every 90 seconds during work times. No doubt social is an addiction?

Social media is addictive because we cherish competition and it allows us to choose the arena to layout our competition. It turn a simple conversation into a competition by simply adding a rating or measure in the form of "likes". Who gets the most "likes" and who receives most attention is the race we run now. Like a loosing gambler who hordes all his remaining resources and enters the den once again to win, social media addicts go for more and riskier posts to win. The best part it all comes for free. Ironically, it costs lives.

I was in the waiting lounge in Singapore airport recently, where 3 elderly ladies came up and took the vacant chairs next to me. We exchanged pleasantries as they settled down, and then the first thing I heard from one of them was " I am dying to get my connection to the internet". I looked up and kept an eye on them just for curiosity. I watched them soon sharing pictures and posts of their going-about trips and remarks posted. 

User of social media know very well about their own addiction, the craving, thrill and pleasures they derive from their participation. But none would give away any bit of it. This addiction is being realized now and it is not surprising, slowly we are having robots and machines taking over jobs and decision making. No longer the addicts are at helm. Machine and software now decide what to buy, what to wear, where to go and if someone is good looking!  

But there is enormous good done by the social media. In fact I am a product of this social media. I have evolved as a brand and manufacture now, thanks to social media. It allowed me to put forth my idea, innovation and products through social media and have successfully created an image of me, however what remains unknown to me is, "is my image a perfect one?"