My name is Stacey Goldberg and I am addicted to social media.
And while the common phrase goes “knowing is half the battle,” I feel as though my battle to recovery is far less than half way through. And that’s because I have no desire to rid myself of this addiction, and I’m confident in saying that I’m not alone; my feelings are shared with my fellow Lafayette students. That’s right. Us millennial’s are addicted to our facebooks, twitters and text-capable phones.
And who can blame us? It’s the way of the future, right? We’re committed to innovation and it’s transforming the way we interact and present ourselves. Is this bad? I tend to think that it is not. Sure, my typing habits rnt the best, and I find it difficult to go more than an hour or two without checking my email or phone. But unlike many other addictions (alcohol, drugs, food), this addiction doesn’t seem to have nearly as many or as severe consequences.
My thoughts seem to be on par with Dr. Perri Class, who in his recent post in the New York Times “Seeing Social Mesia as Adolescent Portal More Than Pitfall” describes the history of communication-altering technologies, such as the telephone. Apparently, when boys and girls first started using these now almost-antiquated-devices, doctors were afraid that the very nature of human conversations would be changed forever – boys would be able to lure girls with only their voices and girls would become vulnerable.
And while I understand the concept of this danger, even in today’s context of social-media addiction, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as these doctors make it out to be. And it seems Dr. Class’s thoughts and research are consistent with mine. “Many [doctors have] started to approach social media as an integral, if risky, part of adolescence, perhaps not unlike driving,” he states. According to pediatrician Dr. Michael Rich, “We should not view social media as either positive or negative, but as essentially neutral”
Personally, I’ve had my fair share of social-media related “issues.” Since I’ve started using AIM in middle school, I’ve had chat-conversations that range from straight-up cyber-bullying to all-night flirtatious chats (PG! chats). And in recent college-years I’ve had to untag my fair share of photos and alter some privacy settings to protect the integrity of my online presence. And I know I’m not alone here. It seems that all of us millennial’s are going through these “stages” of life.
According to a 2011 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics Council “A large part of this generation’s social and emotional development is occurring while on the Internet and on cellphones.” Yes, the same battles that our parents went through in person, we are going through online. And we all overcome! Just as with face-to-face bullying, flirting and aforementioned tagged-photo events, what hasn’t killed us has made us stronger.
For me, the same online tools that I use to chat with friends and post silly photos of my dog, I use to market myself for the “real world.” I love scrolling through my news feed and seeing my internet-savvy friends use these tools to communicate messages that are important to them. The same tools that make us laugh and cry and that have helped us “develop emotionally and socially,” we use to show just how far we’ve come as individuals. By actually utilizing the tools that let us protect the things we want to protect and taking advantage of the right online networking tools, we’ve used our addictions for our greater good. And the best part of it all? Because of the very nature of our addictions, We know we’re not alone.