From swiping to sipping: The digital pathway to dependency
More than five billion people use some form of social media. In the United States, 75% of teens have an active account on a social media platform. Digitization has crept into our lives and altered our world. People check social apps for news, trends, academics and to keep in touch with their peers. When we crave information, social media can give us a fix. Although it is simple to use and engaging, our digital overconsumption is creating a new and discrete path to substance use disorders in our generation.
Controversial trends spread rapidly on social media and penetrate the minds of impressionable demographics. Numerous videos discussing the usage of nicotine pouches called Zyns have amassed millions of views on TikTok. While most videos frame these products in funny ways for entertainment, the product’s fame from the social media app has attracted many new consumers. From 2022 to 2023, the company grew astonishingly fast at a rate of 62%. Even though these videos did not aim to introduce young people to Zyns, the buzz surrounding the sarcastic videos did. Increased curiosity and a desire to experiment among teens occur when we shed a humorous light on harmful products to susceptible audiences. It is astonishing to think that a TikTok joke alone created a lifelong struggle with substance abuse in teens.
Influencers on social media inadvertently encourage addiction by sharing their unrealistic, expensive lifestyles online. Alix Earle has recently come under fire for glamorizing excessive alcohol and drug use. Her videos center her daily life, which consists of going out multiple times a week and binge drinking on any occasion she can. This behavior is normalized for most college students as we have been exposed to this environment through university life. However, watching popular influencers overconsume alcohol can cause teens and younger viewers to associate these behaviors with success, popularity and fun. Heavy drinking can therefore occur earlier, and intensive substance abuse problems can arise in these viewers later in their lives.
Social media is proven to act as a catalyst for the creation of addictive behaviors. Apps and networks can give a substantial hit of dopamine to your brain. Over time, you build up a tolerance to smaller hits of dopamine, and you require more to feel gratification. Long-term phone usage damages our neurological receptors and causes us to consume more entertainment to feel what we once did pre-dependence. As our social media usage has increased our tolerance, all dopamine-related behaviors must be done more often to get the same hit.
Despite this, the relationship between social media and actual substance abuse fostered by dopamine tolerance is largely overlooked. Established connections between media influence and behavioral changes in young people guide us to understand its dangers. Despite this, the relationship between social media and actual substance abuse fostered by dopamine tolerance is largely overlooked. The lack of research on the direct impact of media trends and intensive social media usage on substance abuse rates allows us as a society to ignore the issue and continue with our over-usage.
It is not easy to just quit anything we find ourselves dependent on. Aside from our psychological dependency on social media, we feel a need to belong on it as well. With neurological and emotional ties to social media, we are moving down a very dangerous path. In the U.S., more than 13% of people aged 12 and older have used drugs within the past month. Although a lot has changed in our world over the past decade, the most substantial change has been our technological tendencies. Why has this link not been established? Why are people not more concerned?
Prior to eighth grade, the health education curriculum in Michigan only offers a simple overview of the dangers of alcohol and tobacco usage. In this programming, the various pathways to addiction are not covered. While the substances themselves are incredibly dangerous, so are the other ways by which one can become addicted. Viewing these disorders as choices is damaging, and teaching students that addiction can be curbed by avoiding these substances altogether is an incomplete view. To break the cycle of addiction, we must intervene as early as possible with fully encompassing education plans. Young people’s dependence on social media needs to be critically analyzed, researched and taught properly in schools to prevent them from struggling with addiction.
Americans are experiencing an epidemic of addiction to digital entertainment. Due to the sheer number of Americans who consume such content each day, these behaviors are not taken seriously. That is highly concerning. Teens use social media for almost five hours a day on average. With addiction rates rapidly increasing, we must study risk factors. Social media is the most dangerous risk factor to date, but it is still strangely ignored. Educators, parents, influencers and policymakers need to collaboratively foster environments that prioritize well-being and activity outside of social media usage. Instagram and TikTok made more than $11 billion last year from taking advantage of and abusing our brains’ biological need for dopamine. Society is suffering as a result of their greed.
Rachelle Evans is a student at the University of Michigan. This article was originally published by The Michigan Daily and is posted here with permission from Rachelle Evans.
Like most of the pictures on TeensParentsTeachers, the picture posted with this article is courtesy of a free download from Pixabay.com.