Addiction to social networks: the abuse of virtuality

New technologies bring the risk of confusing the Internet with face-to-face relationships.

In psychology and mental health in general, the concept of addiction is very much centered on chemical dependency to substances; in fact, in the main diagnostic manuals the only case of addiction to something other than a drug that is mentioned is that of pathological gambling, in which one cannot stop playing games of chance.

However, outside the clinical realm there are other conceptions of what is meant by "addiction", and these tend to change more rapidly than the more or less rigid categories arrived at through scientific consensus. This is particularly noticeable in the field of new technologies, where we are already beginning to talk about a relatively new phenomenon: social network addiction. And it is that the generalization of the use of Internet has its advantages, but also its risks.

What is addiction to social networks?

As its name suggests, addiction to social networks is a relationship of dependence that someone develops towards these virtual platforms of interaction with others, although in reality there is something more than this. People who become obsessed with social networks do not think all the time about the pleasure that the use of the social network makes them feel, but about what is achieved through that platform.

This means that the use of these services does not generate a "pleasure peakWhat is gained is rather the fact of avoiding disappearing from the social map. Normally you are not looking for a reward, but rather to prevent missing events, not finding out about certain news, etc. This is reminiscent of the phenomenon of FOMO (fear of missing out) syndrome, to which this kind of addiction is related.

On the other hand, it should be noted that addiction to social networks is not simply the creation of a dependency on the use of computers. In fact, if there is one thing that now characterizes social networks is that they are everywhere: tablets, smartphones, PCs and other conventional computers and other conventional computers... even in virtual networks accessed through video game consoles.

The emergence of this problem on the Internet

One of the most negative aspects of addiction to social networks is that there are many people who can fall into it. The reason is that these tools do not have the bad reputation of, for example, illegal drugs.and the fact that the fact that others use them creates more reasons to join the phenomenon. Even for professional reasons, in many sectors it is advisable to open a profile on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

Secondly, as social networks have gone far beyond the computer, they can follow us everywhere from the tablet or smartphones, from which they can periodically invade our lives through vibrations and sounds. In psychology, this can be understood as a learning process that leads to only one result: to think all the time in terms of social networks, as they constantly remind us that they are there.

In the case of teenagers, their tendency towards impulsivity and their need to have a broad and expansive social influence can cause them to quickly fall into this kind of tendency. Facebook, for example, offers the added value of bringing together all types of social interactions in one place: posting photos and selfies, sharing links and multimedia content such as songs or humorous videos with which one feels identified, publishing the existence or not of a romantic relationship, etc.

What type of person falls into this obsession?

If a few years ago the stereotype of a person obsessed with new technologies was an adolescent or young adult male with a small number of friends who could not get away from the computer, nowadays those addicted to social networks present a much more heterogeneous profile to which young women and adolescents with relatively good social skills have been added en masse.

Social networks are now understood not only as a limitation of relationships, but also as the public "showcase" through which one must have become the public "showcase" through which it is almost obligatory to pass in order to be relevant in a community of friends and acquaintances, whether large or small, or to achieve fame in places you have never visited. to be someone relevant in a community of friends and acquaintances, whether large or small, or to become famous in places you will never visit.

Thus, a Facebook profile is much more than a means to keep in touch with acquaintances: it is the ecosystem in which everything relevant in social terms will happen. It is not in vain, for example, that a concept has been created to refer to the fact that a courtship does not really begin until it appears in a Facebook status: we speak of "Facebook official" relationships.