Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Social media is an array of internet based tools and platforms that increase and enhance the experience of sharing information. The platform is all about community based input, contact and content sharing. This interactive medium has many interesting things like forums, micro blogging, social networking and podcasts. It has brought a huge change in the communication system and has made easier to connect with anyone in the world. Addiction to social media has been more since last decade. Though majority of the people’s use of social media is not problematic but some users get addicted to the social networking sites. According to recent studies 5-10% meets the criteria of social media addiction. Addiction of social media has significant effects on the brain. Social media affects both physically and psychologically. Social media addiction leads to multiple interpersonal problems and ignoring the other major responsibilities in the day to day life. The term social media addiction is to describe that people spending a lot of time on social networking sites. Social media addiction causes stress, anxiety and other health issues. Excessive use of social media leads to decrease in academic performances in students. Social media addiction has negative effect on interpersonal relationships. Social media addiction also causes depression in people who often gets addicted to social networking sites when compared to the people who don’t. Social media addiction main affect was being able to communicate with others in real life. It creates changes in socialization. In other words social media addiction involves both tolerance and withdrawal. The main outcome for social media addiction is the controlled use of internet and setting up limits. Researches have shown that people who are addicted to social media believe other users are more successful and happier. Social media creates an environment where people compare themselves with each other, which can be harmful for mental well-being. Social media addiction causes not only dissatisfaction of life but also increase in depression and anxiety. This increases self-consciousness and may leads to social anxiety disorder. Mostly among the teenagers social media addiction has become a serious problem. This causes low self-esteem and eating disorders by comparing to other people. The affects that are caused by social media are cyber bullying, decrease in productivity, fatigue and stress, and other mental health related issues. Cyber bullying causes huge stress on the person, which affects the mental health. Cyber bullying also leads to suicide cases. When people are highly engaged with social media, they are less likely to focus on the important work and lead to decrease in productivity. Other health issues such as blurry vision in result of eye strain, back and neck pain issues, disturbed sleep patterns and carpal tunnel syndrome which is the compression of median nerve at the carpal tunnel due to repeated movements of hands and arms. Social media addiction can be decreased by turning off the notifications so the users are not distracted from their work, limiting the time spent on social media and avoiding the usage of mobile before sleep. There is no specific treatment used for social media addiction.

The authors are grateful to the journal editor and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest for the research.