After you alarm goes off in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? I for one roll over, grab my phone, and open up Twitter. Most of my friends would say I’m pretty obsessed with it. I checked it right before I went to bed seven hours ago, but I need to see what I missed. Twitter has become so much of my life, much like probably many of yours, since you created your account, and I’m pretty sure I’d be lost without it. When I go home, I usually have my phone on my 95% of the time, and of course my parents nag me about putting it away and to stop looking at it and it made me wonder, can one become addicted to Twitter?
Of course we have these humorous blogs mocking our strange addiction (CNBC, BuzzFeed), but there I feel like being addicted to Twitter can be as bad as being addicted to anything else. Written here, it explains that logging onto Twitter creates that need to see things over and over again, refreshing something new that can always be updated. The satisfaction of interacting with someone and even retweets give a person comfort and delight in knowing their impact on the social media world. I wouldn’t be surprised to see in the new few years if a Twitter addiction is a forefront contender for mental and psychological disorders. I started using Twitter to keep up with my favorite sports teams, but now I follow a multitude of different people, media and news outlets, and other things. It’s not the ‘cool thing’ if you don’t know the news if its’ not happening right then!
If you ‘suffer’ from a so-called Twitter addiction, let’s help ourselves! What are your ideas on how to curb the refresh pull-down obsession, and do you think Twitter addictions can only get worse before they get better?
If you really like Twitter I would consider buying stock in the Newly publicly traded company. It is supposedly going to IPO at around 17-20$ per share which is reasonable. I personally don’t believe that twitter has much chance to be too profitable because social media revenue comes mostly from ads which we hate 🙁 here is an article about buying Twitter stock if your interested. http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/24/technology/social/twitter-ipo-price/
This post could not be more accurate to how the world is changing and where mental disorders are headed. We are absolutely going to be forever known as the twitter generation, and millions of people all over the world are becoming addicted.
The satisfaction of being able to refresh a feed and see what is happening all over the world in your personal bubble and beyond with your favorite sports teams, celebrities, etc, is almost developing psychological needs to be the first in the know as well as increasing impatience behavior.
This article gives insight on how to handle such this addiction, and includes tips from limiting usage by a third to logging yourself out every few hours to eliminate the immediate response, but is everyone underestimating this toxic problem?
Could twitter addiction be linked to obsessive compulsive disorder? According to the National Institute of Mental Health, symptoms of this disorder include repeatedly checking things to the point where it interferes with daily life.
Maybe you’re right and twitter addiction will be added to the list of psychological disorders, but for now, contemplating the relationship between OCD and supposed twitter addiction is enough to make any rational person cut back on their usage of the website. Unfortunately I know of a twitter-crazed girl who literally cannot go half an hour without checking her twitter since she has to be in the know of what is going on in the world.
What I think is interesting about this post is that it is almost then that you are not addicted to twitter but to the”ability to refresh and get new information”. I looked up how to fight a twitter addiction: http://www.wikihow.com/Defeat-a-Twitter-Addiction Funny actually to read but it made a great point, “make it a hobby”.
I find this entry rather interesting and pretty funny because I do this daily. However, instead of twitter I get on Instagram when I wake up in the morning. I wouldn’t say that I am addicted but I would say that this is my first step to getting reconnected to the world after waking up. I found this article to be interesting though in regards to being addicted to media, check it out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/many-teens-tell-survey-theyre-addicted-to-social-media-texting/2012/06/25/gJQAvZc72V_blog.html
I find this entry rather interesting and pretty funny because I do this daily. However, instead of twitter I get on Instagram when I wake up in the morning. I wouldn’t say that I am addicted but I would say that this is my first step to getting reconnected to the world after waking up. I found this article to be interesting though in regards to being addicted to media, check it out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/many-teens-tell-survey-theyre-addicted-to-social-media-texting/2012/06/25/gJQAvZc72V_blog.html
I also check Twitter immediately before rolling over to go to bed and immediately after my alarm goes off in the morning. To me, this reminds me of the “FOMO” sensation, or the Fear Of Missing Out. That is, we constantly listen to and participate in everything going on around us to make sure that we have all the information and do as much in this life as we possibly can. I’m pretty sure I’ve been highly susceptible to the FOMO sensation since I was little, and this blog made me wonder about the science behind it. I found this article on The Washington Post which directly explains FOMO with regards to social media. I found it to be fairly interesting since it’s something that affects me!