Signs of Social Media Addiction
1. You check your mobile phone every few minutes for any notification on Facebook, Twitter mentions and such.
2. You think your world is over when you have no internet access or when Twitter, Facebook or other social media is down.
3. You assume other people can understand what you mean by your cool terms such as BRB (‘Be right back’), CMI (‘cannot make it’), LOL (‘laugh out loud’) and so on.
4. You have to check in at every new location to let everyone know where you are.
5. You literally announce to everyone on social media what you are doing every day, every hour. Things like brushing your teeth, having a lunch, found a penny, went shopping today and this, that, and the other.
6. You have a meeting every week with others (social media addicts) to plan on what updates to put up on Facebook for next week.
7. You tag your friends on pictures that do not involve them, in order to make sure they see the pictures on their Facebook timeline.
8. You start to #hashtag #about #everything #under #the sun.
9. You have made urgent requests on Facebook for your family and friends to send you ‘lives’ on Candy Crush. (As if your life depends on it.)
10. You believe life is more happening on social media than in reality.
11. You freak out if your pictures are not able to be uploaded onto Instagram or Facebook.
12. Words like ‘Tweet’, ‘Insta’, ‘Pinned’, ‘Updates’, ‘Hashtags’ suddenly has become part of your lingo.
13. You created a Twitter or Facebook account for your pet dog, Bambi; and its parrot pal, James Bond.
14. You cannot live a day without social media; you need to travel with it, eat with it, sleep with it, or even using it while taking a dump.
15. Your teen may complain of frequent headaches and even discomfort in the eyes. He may not be able to see properly and may have blurry or strained vision problems.
16. He may not be able to sleep properly and may have problems with falling asleep or staying asleep. He may toss and turn in his sleep or start speaking while he is sleeping.
17. Your teen may experience fluctuating weight. He could either gain or lose weight without any obvious reasons.
18. You might start getting cranky, irritable or even angry when you are not able to get back to your computer in order to check social media.
19. Any new update on your social media can make you refuse to come out.
20. You may suddenly shut down your computer or close the lid of your laptop when your SO comes near.
You could contract disorders like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
What is it?
Carpal tunnel syndrome - Chronic pain, numbness, or tingling in the hand, caused by compression of the median nerve in the wrist. It can be caused by repetitive bending and extension of the wrist, as in keyboarding, or by medical conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.
The amount of time people spend on social media is constantly increasing. Teens now spend up to nine hours a day on social platforms, while 30% of all time spent online is now allocated to social media interaction. And the majority of that time is on mobile - 60% of social media time spent is facilitated by a mobile device.
The social media platforms themselves are evolving their tools and options to further attract and engage new audiences (e.g. advent of live-streaming features and 360-degree photos/videos). Newer social platforms, including Snapchat, Instagram, and now Musical.ly, are also competing for their share of the market. Accordingly, brands are jumping into social media with social media ad spend expected to reach $36 billion in 2017.
To give marketers a better understanding of the social media landscape, we calculated the time spent across the most popular social media platforms, projected what it means within a consumer’s lifetime, and compared these figures against common daily activities and examples of what can be accomplished with an equivalent amount of time (e.g. walk the Great Wall of China 3.5x, and run 10K+ marathons).
Astonishingly, the average person will spend nearly two hours (approximately 116 minutes) on social media everyday, which translates to a total of 5 years and 4 months spent over a lifetime. Even more, time spent on social is only expected to increase as platforms develop, and is expected to eat further into traditional media - most notably TV. Right now, the average person will spend 7 years and 8 months watching TV in a lifetime. However, as digital media consumption continues to grow at unprecedented rates, this number is expected to shrink in counter to that expansion.
Currently, total time spent on social media beats time spent eating and drinking, socializing, and grooming.
Broken down, time spent on social media differs across each platform. YouTube comes in first, consuming over 40 minutes of a person’s day (i.e. 1 year and 10 months in a lifetime). Facebook users will spend an average of 35 minutes a day, totalling 1 year and 7 months in a lifetime (some statistics include Facebook, Facebook-owned Instagram, and Facebook Messenger for total time spent on Facebook). Snapchat and Instagram come in next with 25 minutes and 15 minutes spent per day, respectively. Finally, users will spend 1 minute on Twitter, spanning 18 days of usage in a lifetime.
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