Is social media addiction growing?

I’ve managed to escape. It’s taken me a while and hopefully the outcome will be long lasting. I say escape but that may be overstating the event a little. It all started quite innocently many years ago.

A friend of mine was teaching at an American university and sent me a letter suggesting that I look at internet communication. The concept looked at the time like something out of science fiction and yet here we are today.

I became addicted very quickly and loved the immediacy of cyberspace communication. When you think about the apparent simplicity of connecting across boarders electronically without restriction it really is quite something to marvel at.

 Over the years I gained an enormous amount of knowledge about internet communication and the whole social media landscape. So much so that a few years ago I found myself teaching strategic social media courses to students and local business people.

So what have I escaped from? A few days ago I deactivated my Facebook account! That may sound simple enough, but like any other addiction it is a big thing for those addicted to actually stop. Many of you may be regular Facebook users and might raise an eyebrow at such an apparently ridiculous move.

For those that might not know, Facebook is an online and social media company based in sunny California. It is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg and his Harvard College friends. They are all very clever bunnies and created something that now has billions of users all over the world.

Facebook sprang into life back in 2004 and I quickly became addicted. I loved the connectivity, the sharing of news, views, video and stunning photographs. It allowed me to catch up with some lovely people and share events in real time without actually being there.

The problem for me was Bacon’s Law. Bacon’s Law is a movie themed game that selects a random actor and connects them with the multi-talented Kevin Bacon in six moves or less.

You can apply the same rule to almost anyone in the world. Do give it a try and laugh. It always amuses me.

Bacon’s Law in action really is Facebook. Find friends who know friends who know friends and so on. It is amusing of course but also rather sinister and a playground for potential stalkers.

Hugely complicated algorithms drive Facebook’s connectivity and therefore offer to those who control Facebook almost unlimited access to very personal data. I became very aware of things and people popping up unexpectedly and that worried me.

I suspect that feeling of unease was reinforced when the Facebook - Cambridge Analytical data scandal hit the headlines last year. Apparently Cambridge Analytical had harvested personal data from the profile pages of Facebook members and used it for political advertising.

It never ceases to amaze me how much personal stuff we quite happily and innocently post online. Clever people do harvest that and advanced data handling can change the way we think. Reinforcing political prejudice is an obvious example and evidenced hourly during the Brexit process.

Increasingly I had become aware of targeted adverts landing on my Facebook home page. Things that I had been searching for online suddenly popped up on my Facebook. Added to that were the newsfeeds that seemed a little too honed making me wonder quite what I was being fed.

Since leaving the world of Facebook I realise how many hours a day I was spending following the daily events of others! I am using that time to catch up on some fun reading, helping me keep the smile…..