How to fight against Social Media Addiction? Facebook, Tiktok, Whatsapp and YouTube

 

Social media (like YouTube, Facebook and Tiktok) addiction has become a harmful addiction for 210 million of people around the world. So, it is a common problem for millions of people. In this blog post, I am going to write about the problem and then suggest some ways to come out of it. For doing that, I literally have to remain out of using Facebook and YouTube for the next few hours if I want to write this post. My plan is to write at least 2,000 words.

Staying out of Facebook is almost an impossible thing for me to try. For the last 10 years, I have sort of lived my life in Facebook entirely and to some extent in YouTube. I surely enjoyed my time and life here as I did it mostly to accomplish some missions in life and work.

Fortunately, I was never a fan of Tiktok and did not spend that much of time in YouTube either. I was not a fan of Tiktok’s funny videos and in YouTube, I missed the part of commenting. I was more of a text guy rather than video loving person.

Ten years ago, I was not a person to spend even 10 minutes of my time in social media websites like Facebook. I used to spend more time in browsing Internet and reading blog posts, world and local news items etc. I used to watch YouTube videos but not that much. Then, on November 2014, I had to promote e-Commerce Association in Bangladesh and the only way to do that was to be active in Facebook.

You see, I noticed that most people who are interested about e-Commerce in Bangladesh were young and they were mostly active in Facebook. So, I started to become active here day and night. At first, it was very boring as I did not have any habit of spending time in social media. However, within just 100 days, I started to enjoy it. I started spending 12-15 hours a day in Facebook and read almost everything related to e-Commerce in my country.

Soon, I noticed that just reading and writing about e-Commere was not enough and Facebook had the potential to bring many people under the same umbrella by a Facebook Group. I started trying for e-CAB FB Group and it clicked. It helped e-CAB to become national level association within just one year.

Anyway, this post is not for depicting my journey with Facebook for 10 years. So, in short, I spent at least 10 hours a day for 10 years and Facebook officially recognized me as one fo the 115 community builders in 2018 under their Facebook Community Leadership Program. I also managed to build one of the largest FB group in online learning with Search English FB group and it has 3.3 million members.

So, How many people are in social media? It should be around 5 billion people. The world has 8 billion people.  Facebook has 3 billion monthly active users or in other words, they log in Facebook at least once a month. It is a massive number. Here, people get connected to one another, write posts, react to posts, photos and videos. You can open a page or like and follow a page. You can open a group or join a group. You can watch long videos or reels (short videos). In short, if you want then you can spend 10-12 hours a day in Facebook.

Youtube is a very popular social media website in which More than Two and a half billion people, login, every month. It is a video sharing website in which many people upload their videos and Millions of people enjoy them. Since uploading and watching video is free of cost, There is always millions of people in YouTube every day. You can find all kinds of videos- educational, informational, entertaining, boring, funny, news, views, songs and anything you can imagine they have it. Many people spend endless hours every day here. It is a form of addiction that can disrupt your normal life.

Tiktok is a video app created by the Chinese company Byte Dance. It has 1.2 billion monthly active users. Mostly, short videos under one minute are uploaded by users around the world.  At first, it became popular manly for the funny short videos but gradually,  all kind of videos started to gain momentum. Now, Tiktok has become a serious threat for Facebook and YouTube.

This videos are highly addictive, and many people spend hours and hours every day just to enjoy them. Tiktok has been banned in different countries for different reasons.

Instagram started its journey in 2010 and become extremely popular within a very short time. It got 10 million registered users within just 1 year. Facebook acquired  Instagram with 1 billion dollar in 2012 and after that Instagram  become more popular. it is a great social media for photos and videos. However, it has some dark and negative sides as many users get depressed by looking at attractive photos of other users. They suffer from an inferiority complex. Can you blame a company for the behaviors of its users? Yes and No. Instagram has not taken any serious step to address the issue.

When it comes to messaging, WhatsApp is the most popular app with 2 billion monthly active users. It came into existence in 2009. The first few years did not go very smoothly for the app and the company. In 2014, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for US$19 billion. After that, the app became even more and more popular. Many people are addicted with WhatsApp in the level that they often lose touch with the real world. In India, the term WhatsApp University has gained wide use in the most negative sense. It simply indicates the fake information and knowledge derived from other WhatsApp users that people view as more credible than universities and mainstream media.

Snapchat is extremely popular among the young generation and it has 800 million monthly active users. it is very popular among the American young people and many of them are addicted in the extreme level and spend too much of their time. it is like having a different word in which they are living and they are cut off from the real world.

Snapchat started its journey in 2011. Since it is very popular among the teenagers, when they get addicted, it is the parents who suffer even more than them. Controlling and restraining children from excessive use of Snapchat has become a problem for many parents in America.

So, you can see that most of the social media websites are extremely addictive as users spend a lot of time here. of course it is the users who are ultimately responsible for their own activities in any website. you cannot blame a website or a company for what you do online. However, the social media companies are always looking for new ways to increase user experience and engagement so that they can earn more money. Yes, almost all of the social media websites do not charge any money from the users but they earn their revenue from displaying advertisements.

After all, they are just for profit companies and their main goal is to increase their revenue and profit. To do so, they have to ensure that their users spend a lot of time within the website or app. More login, more views, more likes, more messages, more comments- yes, only this can bring more money for the companies. So, they need your time and engagement to make more money. You are the product and your time is valuable for them.

Now, let us come to the important question of how to get rid of such addiction. First of all, you have to accept that a problem exists and there is no quick fix or solution that you can become get rid of such addiction overnight. Most people actually struggle to accept the situation or addiction and they think that it is not abnormal because many people around them are using social media websites day and night. They are updating their Lifestyle related news and people around them are reacting and reacting to the posts. They feel that it is a normal and natural part of everyday life.

You have to talk to yourself and convince your mind that it is a serious problem. Why did you become active in social media? Is there any particular reason? Which part of social media activities do you enjoy most? If you can find answers to these questions, then it will become easier to deal with the addiction. I have already stated that I became active in social media because I had to promote e-CAB or e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh. I enjoyed Facebook because here I could promote and implement some of my ideas by bringing under a lot of people in a Facebook Group.

I got addicted with Facebook because I wanted to prove that you can use Internet even Facebook for good causes. People can learn in Facebook and even do business with f-Commerce. Sadly, I got too much carried away and sacrificed my sleep for many years. I used to stay awake whole night and read many posts in Facebook, think about what they say and feel and then motivate or guide them to a common cause. For example, under my guidance, many people could improve their Bangla Typing skill. They formed habit of reading newspapers and classic books.

At first, quitting social media can become quite a painful experience. I have experienced it for the last 3 days. Suddenly, you will feel that your life is empty and you have no peace and happiness. You are out of energy and life is boring, dull and hopeless. You are curious about the people you follow in social media. What are they doing now? Do they miss you? If you just avoid social media only for 100 days then you may find yourself in another world like Rip Van Winkle. If you reduce your social media time by 90% then you will feel extremely tired and out of energy.

if you spend 6-7 hours a day in social media, then after quitting, the first thing that you have to encounter will be what to do with so much free time now. You have simply lost habit of doing any other type of work while you are addicted to social media. Even many of us lose the habit of watching a hour long movie because with excessive use of social media we lose the ability to focus on any work that takes more than 10 minutes. So, what I am doing is that instead of spending anytime in Facebook at all, I am trying to write this long article in a single day.

My initial target was to write for 2000 words but now I feel that I will be able to write 2500 words in a single day. Yes, I miss all the Facebook updates and reading all the posts but writing is something that I always enjoyed in my life. Because of becoming addicted to Facebook, I lost the habit of trying to write about anything 100 words at a stretch. if I could just keep writing 1000 words everyday then by now I would have become a very successful writer at least in my own country.  Anyway, I am very happy that today I am writing almost 2500 words today.

if you quit social media or reduce the time that you spend by 90% then the first thing you will notice is complete lack of energy both physical and mental.  You may even feel depressed and gloomy, but believe me, this is not real depression or real problem.  Instead, it is a sign of improvement and  you are coming out of the addiction.  Just tell yourself repeatedly that you are doing a very good thing and there is light at the end of the tunnel.  I am trying to repeatedly tell myself that from now on I will become a serious writer.

You have to find the alternative and think in advance about what you will do when you quit social media. otherwise you will become so much demotivated and depressed you will be forced to go back to your social media addiction. For the first few days or even few weeks, you will simply be out of energy and will find it difficult to focus on anything else.

Always remember that you developed your social media addiction by spending time for many hours’ month after month.  Therefore, it will take time to get out of it. However, be optimistic that you will come out of it sooner or later.

You should try to visualize about the aftermath of coming out of social media addiction. Just imagine what good things can happen once you give up your social media addiction. You can have a lot of free time to do some other works. You can have free time for exercising, reading, doing something that is your hobby etc. This visualization is very important will give you mental relief.

Getting rid of social media attention does not mean that you have get rid of it totally. You just limit your time to more logical and period. You can limit yourself to just one hour. You can think of participating in groups that help you to learn something or related to your career or hobby. Even there, you should not spend more than one hour. If you are a student, then do not think that you have a lot of free time to waste. You have to study about 5-6 subjects. If you are not serious about your studies, then there is a good chance that you will suffer in your career.

Look, remember that social media companies like Facebook, YouTube spend billions of dollars to keep people like you and me in their website or app. They have the smartest engineers and marketers to do their job. So, it is very difficult to get out of the addiction because they are investing heavily to keep us addicted. So, it is not easy to get out of the addiction but if you really want then you can do it. Try to visualize that you can do it then you will really be able to come out of the addiction.

Finally, I started writing this post almost 10 hours ago. I just kept on writing 100-200 words and thus, after 10 hours I am heading towards 2500 words. This is an article that will be read by hundreds of people who are looking for a way to get rid of social media addiction. However, sadly, most of them will not read more than 2-3 paragraphs. If you have come to the end, I think that there is a strong chance of winning the battle. So, believe in yourself and keep on trying.