Source reference
Griffiths, M. D. (2018). Adolescent social networking: How do social media operators facilitate habitual use? Education & Health, pp. 66-69. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from http://content.ebscohost.com/ContentServer.asp?T=P&P=AN&K=132616118&S=R&D=eue&EbscoContent=dGJyMNXb4kSeqLU4xNvgOLCmr1Gepq5Sr664SbKWxWXS&ContentCustomer=dGJyMPGptE2yprdIuePfgeyx43zx
Article type
Periodical
Summary
This article explains the eight main reasons why social media has become habitual to adolescents and teenagers.
In-depth summary
This article begins with Griffiths explaining how he was to give oral, after written, evidence of the effects of social media and addiction. Young people may experience what Griffiths believes are the six components to an addiction: salience, conflict, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, and relapse.
- Salience: social media is the most important activity
- Conflict: neglect other aspects of life (social relationships, education, everyday activities)
- Mood modification: social media used to modify mood states
- Tolerance: build up time spent on social media
- Withdrawal: negative psychological/physical effect if not using social media
- Relapse: struggle to cut down/stop using social media
- (Griffiths, 2018, p.66)
Some of these components may occur, such as not spending much time with family, but many adolescents are not actually addicted to social media; it is seen as more of a habit. Griffiths explains the main reason why social media use is seen as habitual:
- Unpredictable rewards
- Social affirmation and validation
- Fear of missing out
- Smartphone sounds and vibrations
- Social connection
- Reciprocal liking
- Social competition
- Psychological investment
The first reason is unpredictable rewards. There is an element of randomness and users can not predict what will show up. This anticipation cam be psychologically pleasing as well as if they get a notification that they did not expect that makes them feel good.
The next is social affirmation and validation. This is seen mainly in the “like” button on Facebook but can also be found in other social media. People like to feel rewarded for what they post, and the anticipation makes them feel almost the same as getting that “like.” Also, simply waiting to open the app “is a deliberate ploy to increase anticipatory feelings of the user (because the anticipation of a reward is almost as good as the reward itself in releasing dopamine) (Morgans, 2017)” (Griffins, 2018, p.67).
Another reason is the fear of missing out. Adolescents do not want to feel like they are not getting that rewarding feeling while others are. High levels of FOMO lead to negative effects such as lower well-being and life satisfaction.
Smartphone sounds and vibrations also play a role in habitual social media use. It is a natural reaction for teenagers to look at their phone screens when they hear a sound or watch it light up. This is the goal of social media operators and is described by Morgans as the “attention economy.” They must grab the attention of users and then keep them engaged.
Social media creates a social connection for teenagers in an easy and fast way. “Most individuals want to be connected with other like-minded individuals” (Griffiths, 2018, p.67-68).
Reciprocal liking is another reason social media has become a habit. If you “like” someone’s post, that person is more likely to now “like” yours. “Reciprocal liking is tendency for individuals to like others who express a liking for themselves (‘I like you because you like me’) (Eastwick & Finkel, 2009)” (Griffiths, 2018, p.68). Social media operators typically alert people when someone has seen, liked, commented, etc. on a post to enforce the idea of reciprocal liking.
Along with this, adolescents tend to make “likes” and social media a competition. They try to beat their own record for number of likes or other people’s. It becomes a routine to check the number of likes there is on a post to see if they are “beating” their “competition.”
Lastly, the large amount of time teens put into social media gets them psychologically invested similar to how adults play the lottery or gamble. Snapchat is a good example of this. The longer a streak is (consecutive days sending pictures to each other), the more persistent the user is going to be in continuing the streak.
Social media is not necessarily made to create addictions, however just to get users to want to use it often. Teenagers use it every day, and the more they are on these social media sites, the more likely they are to create a routine out of it.
Evaluation (strengths and weaknesses)
This article had many strengths including good reasoning and good examples/statistics. There were many other sources cited which gave many different perspectives, although they all agreed that social media has become habitual. The other side of the argument was mentioned briefly, however, a weakness is the rebuttal could have been stronger with more solid evidence.
Relation to my research question
This is very relevant to my research question because it gives the reasons as to why teenagers are addicted to social media. Although it is seen as a habit, addiction is mentioned as well as ways that the two are related. The first page explains how social media can in fact cause an addiction even if it is not seen in many adolescents.
Significant quotes
“Research suggests that a small minority of adolescents genuinely become addicted to social media in the same way that other individuals become addicted to activities such as drinking alcohol or gambling (Kuss & Griffiths, 2017)” (Griffiths, 2018, p.66)
“The rewards – which may be physiological, psychological and/or social – can be infrequent but even the anticipation of one of these rewards can be psychologically and/or physiologically pleasing” (Griffiths, 2018, p.66)
“random rewards keep individuals responding for longer and has been found in other activities such as the playing of slot machines and video games (Griffiths, 1991)” (Griffiths, 2018, p.66-67).
“While I have little doubt that such rewards (or the anticipation of such rewards) release dopamine, the idea that dopamine ‘hijacks the brain’ and leads to ‘compulsive loops’ are analogies used in the media rather than the phrases used by scientists (the word ‘hijack’ is emotionally-laden to say the least)” (Griffiths, 2018, p.67).
“Higher levels of FOMO have been associated with greater engagement with Facebook, lower general mood, lower wellbeing, and lower life satisfaction, mixed feelings when using social media, as well as inappropriate and dangerous social networking site use (i.e., in university lectures, and whilst driving) (Buglass et al., 2017; Oberst et al., 2017)” (Griffiths, 2018, p.67).
“Sounds and vibrations are deliberately designed and distracting technologies that facilitate users’ attentions away from the offline world and back to life online – pulling individuals ‘out of the moment’ (Morgans, 2017) and is arguably an example of ‘persuasive technology’ (Alter, 2017)” (Griffiths, 2018, p.67).
“In some recent research we did on obsessive selfietaking, social competition (i.e., getting the most ‘likes’ for selfies posted online) was one of the major reasons for posting selfies in the first place (Balakrishnan & Griffiths, 2018; Griffiths & Balakrishnan, 2018)” (Griffiths, 2018, p.68).
“Individuals have spent so much time psychologically invested that to stop doing it would mean that all their previous time spent on social media sites has been a complete waste of their time” (Griffiths, 2018, p.68).
Vocabulary words
FOMO- fear of missing out
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