Signs You Are Addicted to Social Media

**Social media can be detrimental to your health and to others’. Realize this addiction in its early stages and nip it in the bud. Teen suicides have spiked in recent years and scientists believe this spike is due to the widespread outbreak of Social media. Social media lives within our phones and our computers, the very things we carry around everyday. If that buzz in your jacket pocket is causing you to have an intense need to look at it, you might be addicted.**

Are you addicted to Social media? Social media are apps such as: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat, that are highly addictive.

Signs You Are Addicted to Social Media:

1. ALL of your free time is spent on one form of social media or another. Free time including: before bed, in the car, in class, in the bathroom, watching TV, etc…
2. You find yourself detaching from conversations with your family or friends just to check the amount of likes you got on a picture you just posted.
3. You find yourself forgetting to and purposely not doing chores or pushing off your homework for some extra screen-time.
4. Your phone is the first thing you think about in the morning and it is the last thing you use before going to sleep.
5. You hear imaginary notification pings upon not being on social media for too long.
6. You post pictures of everything you do; eat, shop, run, draw, etc. When you do not get an adequate amount of likes, you angrily delete said post.
7. You have deleted all your posts at least once to change your theme and make your page appear edgy or aesthetic to newcomers.
8. You begin to use hashtags or text abbreviations in real life conversations.
9. One or all of your animals also has a social media, causing you to devote more time to their page(s) and your page rather than your actual pets.
10. You stalk a specific person’s page or channel and start to tweak your posts to match theirs or appeal to them more.

Once your addiction is self-diagnosed, you can begin the steps to recovery. These steps include:

1. On your iPhone, you can go to Settings and set time limits on ‘screen time’ and expose yourself for the addicted teenager that you are. This can help you realize your addiction and help you back off a little. For those without an iPhone, you can set a time limit on Instagram for a notification once you pass your set screen time.
2. Turn off push notifications on your phone. The less you see, the less you will want to spend valuable time on your social media.
3. Take up a new hobby.
4. Step back and realize why you got the app in the first place. If it was not to make you happy, delete it.
5. Ask your friends who do not have social media how they function without it and model your schedule to match theirs. (Surprise! That means no more social media!)