Addiction to Social Media

By Tuanh Le ’19

Growing up, I always had technology around me. We had our first family computer when I was in 2nd grade and I was basically hooked ever since. I learn way more via social media than I do in real life. Social media and technology introduced me to a whole new  way to connect with my friends and extended family.  I had Myspace when I was still in elementary school, and by my teenage years Facebook had taken over. I personally started using Facebook during the 7th or 8th grade but I didn’t become an active user (posting pictures or comments) until the 10th grade. However, with Instagram and Snapchat becoming more popular, I found myself using facebook less often. It was easier to detach myself from Facebook once I learned that my parents and family had accounts, meaning that I could no longer post whatever I wanted. I don’t want my mom to know what I’m saying or how I’m feeling. Now, in my senior year of college, I find myself logging on to Facebook to only look at memes or cool videos. I rarely,if ever, post anything; I do change my profile pictures from time to time. It’s actually funny considering the fact that all of my friends my age do the same thing as me while my mother, my father, and my aunts post images, live stream, comment on everything, etc.

The increased presence of family members and older generations has pushed younger generations, myself included, out of Facebook. It also pushes younger people to use other social media platforms because there are no older family members looking at our posts and commenting on our daily lives. For instance, I would most likely never post my Instagram pictures on Facebook because I know it’s usually more explicit (middle fingers, type of clothing, makeup, etc.) and I don’t want my family members to know and secretly judge me on what I’m doing. It came to my knowledge that even though we, as a whole generation, made Facebook ‘famous’, we don’t really use it mainly because we know our family members are on here. We already see them every day at home, we don’t want them to know what we do outside from that, much less our parents. In this sense, we use social media platforms to be our true, uncensored selves, which cannot happen when we feel watched and judged by our older family members. 

During our presentation for class, I stated that in 2011, there were 57 million Facebook users, ages 13 to 25. In 2014, it dropped to 51 million users. That’s a decrease of 32 percent in a matter of 5 years! However, if you see ‘adults’ (ages 26 to 54), in 2011 there were 74 million users and then in 2014, there were 86 million users, making it an increase of 73 percent!

Like I said up above, when there is an increase on parents and family members on a website we think is ‘cool’, it suddenly becomes uncool so we leave to other social media like Instagram and Snapchat. In our presentation, I talked about a study done in University of Boston where they question people from ages 13 to 25 out of all the social media they know of, what would they quit and 64.9 percent of them said they would quit Facebook. That’s not shocking news considering the fact that when parents started coming in, we started to going out.

Sources

Cohen, David. 2018. “Snapchat Continues Its Surge Among U.S. Teens, While Facebook Free Falls” (https://www.adweek.com/digital/snapchat-continues-its-surge-among-u-s-teens-while-facebook-free-falls/)

Pinkstone, Joe. 2018. “Are YOU quitting social media?” (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5481591/Millennials-quitting-Facebook-say-goodbye-Snapchat.html)

Abadi, Mark. 2018. “Millennials have taken down dozens of industries — but it looks like Gen Z will be the ones to hurt Facebook (https://www.businessinsider.com/generation-z-facebook-2018-1)

Matthews, Christopher. 2014. “More Than 11 Million Young People Have Fled Facebook Since 2011” (http://business.time.com/2014/01/15/more-than-11-million-young-people-have-fled-facebook-since-2011/)

Sinek, Simon. “Millennial and Internet Addiction” (https://youtu.be/lU3R0ot18bg)