Abuse and Addiction Associated with Social Media
Justin McIntyre
English 1302, T-TH 5:30
Professor F. Dziadek
November 25, 2014
Justin McIntyre
20 November 2014
A Call to Acton:
Regulate the Use of Social Media Statistics show, each year 700 billion minutes are spent on Facebook alone, with a normal person spending approximately 15 hours a week, not attempting to calculate the time spent checking emails, playing video games, or just surfing the web. Social media is all encompassing between technology, including video games, virtual worlds, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and even YouTube. Many dangerous are associated with this condition ranging from numerous disorders such as depression or social anxiety and shockingly even a number of recorded deaths. Though technology has become a predominant part of our life, regulation or moderation is necessary because social media abuse has become more common leading to clinical depression, social anxiety, and a number of recent discoveries including (SMAD) Social media anxiety disorder and (IAD) Internet Addiction disorder. Why do individuals feel the need to share every detail about their personal life on social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook? This is the primary question being researched at Harvard University, attempting to learn more about how this affects the brain, and what motivates those who are involved in the study. Studies prove the direct relation between social media abuse and the “addiction chemical” known as dopamine, and the effects that it has on the brain. This response, which is triggered, provides the same reaction as “positive activities” such as making money, eating food, or even sexual intercourse. To monitor the reactions they used advanced equipment such as a MRI machine to scan and locate the specific part of the brain that deals with this response. Researchers noticed an increased amount of abnormal activity in
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