Summary

The title was ‘Research Links Addictive Social Media Behavior With Substance Abuse’.  Psychologists found those who use social media may be at great risk for impulse-issues like substance abuse.  The research, asked questions about social media use to 253 students, showed 10 % of users experience ‘disorderd social media use’.  One researcher, Hormes says that new notifications or the latest content acts as a reward, and the uncertainty of them encourages us to check back frequently. And the researchers hypothesize that disordered social media use is likely a symptom of poor emotion regulation skill. According to this, MRI data has shown that the brains of compulsive Internet users to exhibit similar changes to those in people with alchol and drag addiction.

Opinion

As researchers says,   it is difficult to regard disordered social media use as a full-blown addiction because the definition of ‘addiction’ depends on you. But when we think back on our behavior about SNS, it is clearly ‘addiction’, I think. When our class is over, on the train, even while we meet someone, we use our smartphones and check SNS. In the last class, we discussed how we give up these bad behaviors. One of our group members  who is very strict suggested me to read books or listen to music instead of checking SNS.  I thought it was very smart idea. So from now on, I’d like to do so to stop my addiction of SNS!