A new drug is plaguing Generation Z, causing rapid declines in their mental health and obsessive behaviors. Screen time addictions often go unnoticed but can become detrimental.
Social media can act as a distraction from reality, but — instead of fixing the problem — it makes it 10 times worse. Mastermind Behavior, a group that specializes in therapy of youth with autism diagnoses, noted Gen Z spends two hours more on their phones than the average American, leading to higher levels of anxiety and depression. People resort to doom-scrolling as shelter from their lives, plunging into concerning headlines and fading trends, rather than facing problems and having genuine interactions. The constant barrage of noise becomes a hiding place as viewers pursue the picture-perfect feed.
These perfectly curated feeds create an echo chamber of influencers who preach what we already believe in, increasing polarization and ignorance toward different viewpoints. When viewers do not hear contradicting beliefs, they take these words as fact, making them vulnerable to the lies sold by influencers. Over time, consumers lose the capacity to see the world clearly without the filter of perfected videos and can even lose their sense of self. Deep down, this generation knows the harm they are causing themselves with jokes about touching grass rather than a screen, but few do anything to remedy the problem. So why do people keep returning to their screen like it’s a toxic ex? They are addicted.
Humans gain dopamine when connecting with others and experiencing new ideas. Stanford Medicine explains this process is accelerated with social media and causes consumers’ minds to become addicted to the dopamine their phone gives them in the same way others get addicted to drugs. People enjoy looking at the perfect lives of others and pretending the same perfection is attainable. Consumers crave the entertainment and the feeling of being in the know. Unplugging means allowing silence to replace the noise of everyone else’s thoughts, giving space to the feelings that make people run to their screens in the first place.
Silence may be scary, but facing reality is the only way to break this addiction. We must force ourselves to step away from our screens and find a balance between the online and real world. Breaking through the noise allows people to have genuine conversations without distractions where real progress can occur rather than doom scrolling and avoiding reality.
I say all this as someone whose job is social media management, so I know the value of marketing on social media, using it as a platform to promote ideas. As much as I love working in social media, I cannot ignore the spinning in my head when I spend too much time on it, nor the fact I find it difficult to spend more than a few minutes in absolute silence without wanting to rip out my hair.
This is a deep-rooted internal conflict in our culture. People crave peace and quiet but cannot seem to drop their screens long enough to see if a screenless life could be the remedy they have been searching for.
