In Danah Boyd’s Its Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, the author examines youth and online use, further exploring topics such as identity, privacy, and addiction. One of the chapters that stood out to me this week was the chapter about internet addiction, “What Make Teens So Obsessed with Social Media?”.
In this chapter, Boyd describes the history of “addiction”, the word itself, and how it has evolved over the years. Boyd explains how years ago “addiction” used to describe an interest or hobby such as gardening, then the meaning of the word began to change to alcohol and substance abuse, and then to impulse-control disorders.
She then explains how nowadays, someone who is “addicted” is described to engage “in a practice in ways that society sees as putting more socially acceptable aspects of their lives in jeopardy” (177). With this definition, parents now label their children as “addicted” to the internet because they may choose to be in an online chat room or lose sleep to be active online.
When reading this chapter, I kept being reminded of an image I had seen before of different social media site names that were written on syringes. This image shows the contrast of what has been seen as “addiction” in the past and how teenagers are being labeled as “addicted” now. When one usually would see a syringe that is displayed in the image, it is associated with serious drug addiction—however in this image, it is being associated with Facebook, Youtube, and Tumblr. I feel like this image is striking because it really shows how blown out of proportion this “youth addicted to social media/internet” has become. I do understand that it can be described as addiction in some cases and that the image is dramatized on purpose, however comparing social media websites to drug abuse like that image does seems unnecessary and over the top. I feel that this image really illustrates the complications that come with constantly labeling youth as “addicted” to social media.
I still can’t decide if I could categorize myself as addicted to social media. This was really interesting how you talked about the use of the word addiction. This has made me realize that I must decide how I perceive addiction to come figure out my opinion on the statement.
I’m also not a fan of the word “addiction” especially in reference to the widespread use of social media. It’s incredibly sensationalizing. However, that being said, I do get concerned when I pass my floor’s lounge in the morning and see someone who has clearly stayed up playing computer games all night, so I realize that technology can be addicting.
I agree that comparing social media addictions to drug abuse is quite bizarre, obviously drugs are much more detrimental to society and humans than social networking cites. Although I personally am not a huge fan of spending time on social media, and I would argue that kids these days do spend too much time on the internet, kids being addicted to being social is a lot better than drug addictions, therefore making the comparison, like how the photo you talk about is, does not make much sense. I liked how we briefly mentioned in class that being addicted to social media is like being addicted to people, which is not a bad thing, right?