Consultant Psychiatrist
Imagine you are reading a text. Suddenly, you come across an unfamiliar word. Maybe you don’t know the spelling, maybe you don’t know the meaning, maybe you don’t know the pronunciation or maybe you’d simply like to know more about the topic. You can instantly look it up on the internet. Online dictionaries, Google, Wikipedia will help you navigate whenever you get stuck. Undoubtedly, digital media has revolutionised the way we access knowledge, share knowledge and use knowledge.
Now, imagine a slightly different scenario. Suppose, you are doing your homework. You have read the prose and now you are writing down the answers in your exercise book. Suddenly, your mobile goes, “bleep.” Someone has sent you a Whatsapp message. You check the message, write something and put the phone down. “Bleep,” goes your mobile again. Someone commented on your post on Facebook. The “likes”, “emojis,” and comments give you an immediate high. You feel a gush of positive emotion, someone has seen your post and liked it. But now,” Where was I?” You have completely lost track of your homework. By the time you gather your thoughts and settle back to work, you have lost quite a bit of time. And, once you restart your homework, the mobile bleeps again.
You can see how the digital media is consuming your time and interfering with your concentration. But, you can argue that social media IS your social life. You are interacting with “friends”. After all, we need friends, we need them to be there for us. We need to connect. But what does the term friend mean? Is it even remotely connected to the concept of Facebook friends?
We tend to have a core group of friends. Their number does not exceed five. These are the people with whom we interact regularly. People may drift in and out of this core group depending on the frequency and intensity of our interactions. If we slightly extend this core group, we get a group of close yet loosely associated friends. The number is about fifty. If we extend the group further, we get the concept of a clan. This number, also known as Dunbar number is 150. This was the maximum number of members in hunter-gatherer groups. A human brain is not capable of interacting with more than 150 people at a personal, emotional or social level.
So how can someone have five hundred or one thousand “friends” on Facebook? There cannot be any substitute for face to face interaction. Living in a community, a sense of belonging, sharing common values and ideas helps us develop our unique personalities. They make us who we are. The online media is invading our personal space and to some extent, it has dehumanised us.
Online presence is an important aspect of our lives. We are trying to build our own personal brand and a fake world around us. Likes and shares make us feel good about ourselves. We “manage” our Facebook profile rather than spending time on deep and meaningful relationships. More than a third of girls in the UK aged 10 to 15 years old are unhappy with their appearance and a quarter are unhappy with their lives (BBC). They feel negative about themselves and they feel that everyone else is having perfect lives— thin, blonde or – perfect teeth, perfect hair, perfect eyes, perfect eyebrows.
Taking selfies, although NOT classified as a mental disorder Selfitis, can nevertheless be deadly. India is the selfie death capital of the world accounting for about 50 percent of the 27 selfie-related deaths around the world in 2015 (The Washington Post). Selfie-takers have been hit by trains, they have slipped off boats, and they have fallen from cliffs and the steps at the Taj Mahal.
No-selfie zones have been declared to prevent this catastrophe. But the trend of taking selfies and posting them online shows no tendency to abate. It has remained a tool for validating our own existence and boosting our self-esteem. In fact, the answer to this is a detox. Social media is like a drug. We can get addicted to social media, just as we can get addicted to drugs or gambling. It triggers the reward system in our brain exactly like food, water and sex which are essential for our survival. (Remember the gush of positive feeling when you see a comment or alike). If you stay offline, initially you’d feel the jitters which are commonly associated with withdrawal. Even a seven-day detox provides a significant improvement in well-being.
Okay, but where do we start? Why don’t you check your level of internet addiction?The Internet Addiction Test (IAT) by Dr Kimberley Young may give you an idea about the extent of your problem. Here is the link: http://www.globaladdiction.org/dldocs/GLOBALADDICTION-Scales-InternetAddictionTest.pdf
