Dopamine addiction.

The dopamine addiction we have on social media is comparable to gambling/hardcore drug addiction. Social media like Instagram and TikTok itself shows examples of how much worse dopamine addiction can be.

Many individuals do crazy and unacceptable things for likes and views. They don’t use it for good; they need fame and money. They need a successful life. So they act like how social media algorithms are designed; they do which content gets more interaction on social media. So in an indirect and effective way social media is making them do it. This includes harmful pranks, cheating on a partner, invading others’ privacy, criticizing others for no reason, etc…

And this is disturbingly normalized by society too.

Your goals and dreams are replaced.

What you consume, what you become. Currently your goal or intention is heavily influenced by social media. Most people might feel unacceptable. But in reality what you see or interact with slowly changes your likes and dreams. If this is a good thing, it is actually a good thing, but what if it is an unacceptable thing?

This happens in a subconscious way. Many people may claim, “I never had a wish or anything, but social media helped me find one,” which is totally false. Social media didn’t help them but tricked them. A powerful algorithm draws a line to move their entire life forward.

You are the product.

They collect all possible data from you and people you know and interact with. They also have trackers on all major websites. And they will easily fingerprint you if you are a regular user of browsers like Chrome, Edge, Opera, etc… With all this collected data, they already build a detailed profile about you. Based on this data profile, they train the algorithm to better understand you and suggest posts and ads based on your preferences. To make it accurate nowadays, they even ask for your ID, email, phone number, etc…

When you see ads that actually make you feel useful, then you click and buy it. Your money is gone, and the social media company generated its ad revenue and commission from the affiliated website. So now say who is the product and who is the user? Data brokers and advertisement customers are their real users.

Small data brokers sell data to major companies, while these major companies keep it themselves to grow their own ecosystem. Major platform owners like Google, Meta, Amazon, etc. has already found doing it. Then what?. They are still doing it and doing it. All these fines and suits seem like a joke at the end.

If a product is free, then you are the product

- not applicable to the FOSS community.

Your mental health is worse than you think.

Nobody actually feels good after scrolling social media. There is too much to look at, and modern bloats like reels, shorts, and even stories are just like a parade of different emotions at the same time. The human brain is never designed to consume such content at all. Eventually it will lead to serious mental health issues.

And this too is extremely normalized by society. Social media owns the power to make fake reality.

Studies have found that Instagram is the worst app for mental health. And the release of the Reels feature made it extremely worse. At the same time, other platforms are not too bad regarding mental health issues.

False sense of productivity.

You believe you are being productive while all the time spending on platforms like YouTube or Quora. But it’s actually not. The more you watch, the more knowledge you get is a myth. If you want to learn something or just want to get knowledge about anything, you have to actually practically do it yourself. The reality is that you consume a lot of hours but do not do anything at all. It means you watch YouTube videos for hours just to forget everything at the end. Or in another way, you fall into those recommendations and waste another 2-3 hours on theirs.

So instead of consuming 10 videos, try to do what said in 1 video yourself and learn from that.

Your privacy is completely gone.

All major social media platforms require massive amounts of data to function. Usually an app like Facebook or Instagram requires these minimum permissions to function properly.

• Camera and permission.
• Storage access
• Location
• Contacts
• Notifications
• Nearby devices
• Bluetooth

And all these data are collected as soon as you open the app. Even if you deny the permission, they constantly ask to turn it on. Many apps are caught collecting this data even if permissions are off.

The profiles they create using these data are permanent; they will never expire or get destroyed, even if you die.

Big corporate companies never sell this to anyone because data is the fuel for this type company but they collect or buy it in every possible way.

You are stuck in reactive mode instead of proactive mode.

Social media teaches you to react to everything. Instead of planning our own life, we are constantly worried about what happened to this celebrity, when that movie will release, and what happened to that influencer/streamer.

Seriously, you don’t have to worry about any celebrities or something; all you have to worry about is you. It’s not selfishness. And actually a way you can help others in your life is by focusing on yourself first!

The need for a perfect body

This affects women more effectively than men. Because they are more worried about their looks and appearance than men. When they see some perfect-looking men or women in the feed, they start to compare them with these figures.

Actually, that can be a model or a celebrity or anything. If yes, then that’s their job. Then why are you comparing yourself with them?. Are you trying to become a model or to get fit for any auditions? Even if yes, then still you don’t have to worry about others looking visually better than you. Because each individual has their own value.

Also, you must be just sitting in your room. They took that photo well prepared with a perfect dress, lighting, background, and more. It’s not relatable to your situation at all.

Sadly, this is also very normalized by society.

You can’t sit alone with your own thoughts anymore.

You know what makes us both different individuals? It’s our thought. So sitting alone with it and caring for yourself is much more important than you think.

By spending too much time on social media, your mind gets distracted very easily by what you see there. The biggest problem in society nowadays is that people don’t know themselves anymore. Because they have no time for themself to sit with their thoughts.

Even the social media algorithm knows you better. Right?

Your genuine personality is replaced by a curated persona.

A lot of these things happen subconsciously. In a deep desire to achieve something, just like everyone, you started to follow certain trends even if you deeply don’t like it. But your mind tells you you must do it to gain more audience and build fame across Instagram.

Actually, by doing such stuff, you are losing your own self for something that at the end doesn’t matter at all.

For example, at a point people care about privacy. Then eventually they get to know that all these apps collect massive amounts of data anyway, so without fighting, just use them normally as everyone does. This actually cost you your privacy as an individual.

Ragebait.

Nowadays social media influencers look more worried about what others are doing than themselves. They are doing this intentionally by suing and teasing others to create ragebait content.

Ragebait is a type of content that is created to provoke certain emotions like anger, frustration, and outrage in viewers.

Because social media algorithms prioritize posts with higher user interaction. Negative emotions are what generate more viewers. So basically they are doing it intentionally for more views and audiences. No content you see on social media is genuine, and there is a reason behind it. Everything you interact with on social media is specifically designed for users like you.

Building someone else’s empire.

All time spent on social media to see and like posts is for someone else’s growth. You helped the platform to generate revenue by watching their ads. At last you are still poor.

Will the content creator or platform give you a share of their earnings?. Never.

At the end, you got some eye strain, depression, overthinking, body pain, etc… See that as a warning to press that delete button. It’s not that hard. Just do it.

Actual talents/skills are getting ignored.

Not everyone uses social media just to consume content. There are people with actual talent and skills who try to create content and posts on social media. but the algorithm never prioritizes them. Even if it prioritizes, they get less than half the views compared to some other shitty video.

Because it’s a business, and they have no benefit by supporting actual talents. They have to boost videos that trigger instant fun and dopamine. That’s the only way to keep these viewers stuck on their platforms.

You can’t handle discomfort.

Whenever you feel bad or stressed, you open your social media. It means you are unable to process your own emotions. This is the effect of opening and scrolling social media when you feel bored and sad. So your mind is now automatically needing that app when you are again feeling bad. This is not for good at all.

You have completely handed over your emotional control to social media platforms. And these social media platforms take that as an advantage to stay on your phone forever.

Comparison goes beyond people to your past.

You see some post and instantly start to compare your past with it. For example, you are seeing a heartwarming video about school life or childhood. Meanwhile, your childhood was a disaster, and you have a trauma about it. So you instantly start comparing, like, “I never got a childhood like this,” while others almost enjoyed every moment in their life from beginning to end.

This is also not true at all. Actually, they are too carrying trauma; they do have a bad childhood that never met the expectations just like you. But the reality is that they don’t want to tell you about the dark sides. They only want to tell the highlights.

So eventually your mind is going to compare your actual past with this curated content. Which leads to unnecessary overthinking and stress.

You are delaying the actual life you want.

The more you spend the time on social media and in front of a screen, the more you are delaying the life you actually want.

So, just stop scrolling as soon as possible. It’s not too late to recover. Try a social media detox to break the walls of your toxic social media world. You deserve better.

The big red flag.

Major social media platform Instagram caught suggesting child porn videos directly in their feed as a recommendation and also in the Explore section. After a big controversy about this, Meta decided to find the channels and posts relating to these and wipe them from their platform. Now Instagram gives an option to control adult posts displayed on the feed and results, but as a non-Instagram user, I don’t know how effective it is.

They don’t even care about what type of content is served to whom. All they are making sure of is just one thing: the suggested post is enough to hook the user in the platform for hours.

Conclusion.

Social media platforms have become so toxic, and society seems to normalize everything. I saw this as a very unhealthy habit and harmful at its best. That’s why I deleted all social media platforms, including Instagram and WhatsApp, around 3 years ago without a second thought. That gave me an immeasurable amount of peace and happiness. Now I have more time for

• Read books.
• Write blogs
• Study.
• Self-care
• Spend time with parents
• Watch a full movie.

and much, much more. I strongly recommend everyone who read my blog to consider a social media detox if any of the reasons I mentioned above are spots in your life.

Thank you so much for reading.