Social web addiction

Social web addiction is a real plague. We experience it everywhere, even at work meetings. Some people start surfing on the social web as soon as they see the chance. They don't look up if you talk to them. You need to send them an e-mail or a chat sentence for them to react. This addiction is not different from other addictions like smoking. It is annoying for the people around and it is even annoying for the addicted person himself. The addicted person needs more strength to stop than to continue and the weakest characters suffer more from addiction than the strongest. Note that 40 years ago, television addiction was a major source of concern for parents and it still exists today, with or without internet addiction on top of it.

Why do we get so addicted? It is not so much because we learn so many new things. We do it because we are social beings. We seek recognition. The advantage of the social web is that recognition becomes quantifiably visible in number of connections, recommendations, likes and comments. But this also nurtures our narcism. The social web gives us the impression we are important and relevant. We seem to tell important things and the other people are there to read all this. The problem is that we all have the same asymmetric, egocentric view. The most important content on the web is always our own. (In this case my blog, that you may read.)

Why is social web addiction a problem? It is not a problem because the social web is more superficial than the "real" world. The social web is just as real and just as superficial as the world we knew from before the social web. In fact, the social web is a mirror image of the "real" world. In daily  talk, we are also narcistic. In the "real" world (whatever that may be), we also believe our "content" (talk) is the most important and hardly listen to what other people have to say.

The true reason why social web addiction is a problem is that the people who are physically around us (children, parents, neighbours, direct colleagues) don't get enough attention. This is a problem if they are not part of our web discussion groups.

What is the solution? I believe we need to create time limits and we need to create routine. Suppose you could force yourself not to go on the social web before all your homework is done. Suppose you would be aware that web surfing in a meeting is impolite to the meeting organiser. Suppose you could force yourself never to do two things at the same time (especially if driving a car is one of them). Suppose you could always stop your social web activities at 10:00 PM. Suppose you would never go on the social web more than once per day. I guess you could turn a lot of time in quality time. You would not be frustrated about missing the things you would not have liked anyway.

I also refer to my earlier blogs: you are your time , raising kids in the 21st century and netwerkverslaving.