The Social Pandemic of the United States

Written by Kai Miglio

In the United States, most things go down at some point. Inflation goes down, housing prices go down, cost of food goes down… But the one thing that never goes down is the screen time usage on smartphones. “They’re just texting their friends! There's nothing bad about that,” some parents say. But do you know your child well enough? Is that really all they are doing for hours a day, everyday?

Surveys suggest that over 93% of teenagers use social media, which is about 37 million teenagers. And what's on these social media platforms? Well, where to start? Fake news, implanted beliefs, doom scroll habits, and overall relations to bad mental health. Texting friends is one thing, but many of these social media platforms, like Instagram for example, have inbuilt doom-scroll magnets that lure you in with dopamine filled videos. 

Why is scrolling so bad for you? First, consistent scrolling is bad for your health. It can cause eye strain damaging your retinas. Especially before bedtime, it disrupts sleep, affecting your life. Social media scrolling can affect your mood, whether you're happy or angry, it can affect your concentration, and the biggest thing I’ve noticed is that it lowers our attention spans. 

Believe it or not, social media can be compared to gambling, especially the short form videos that are being watched on popular apps like TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, and others. The user scrolls, and if they don’t enjoy the video in front of them, they scroll again. It's like pulling the wheel on a slot machine. Pull, pull, pull, until you get a dopamine hit. According to Sperling at Mclean Hospital:

“When the outcome is unpredictable, the behavior is more likely to repeat. Think of a slot machine: if game players knew they were never going to get money by playing the game, then they would never play.”

The idea of a future reward, which is dopamine, keeps the user scrolling. 

It's important to educate yourself and people around you about the risks of social media. In moderate consumption, with most things, it's alright, but if you're not careful you might find yourself in a hole you unknowingly dug yourself.

• Teen sucked into the dopamine vortex

• The average amount of screen time is 7 hours and 22 minutes per day