With the upgrading technology, we pretty much rely on smart devices for almost all sorts of tasks. Whether it is a new shopping brand we want to look for or some new holiday destination, smartphone apps have it all covered for us. Sometimes, addiction to social media apps lead us to suffer from technostress. The craving to look for a holiday away from smartphones and apps are due to the addiction of it. The need to keep the streaks among your friends alive so that you’ll know your friendship is deeper otherwise they may forget about you if you don’t constantly message each other. Sometimes the social overload can lead to stress about invading personal space or the need to reply to messages in order to maintain relationships.
Recently, 444 Facebook users from Germany were surveyed for more than three times within a year to help researchers find out their response to social media technostress. Sometimes, the results were similar to researchers expectations that they eventually diverted their attentions to some other unrelated activities but the most shocking response was seeing users trying to distract themselves from social media technostress by using social media even more than usual.
Social media apps and websites offer a variety of services and ways for users to engage them and that is the reason the social media apps are often called feature-rich technologies enabling users to play games, planning a holiday or reading news all within a single platform. These features allow users to view a single app in so many different ways. So, whenever a social media user feels technostress from a single post they can easily get away from that stress by diverting attention to some other pleasant posts within the app which results into more addiction to those apps.
The diversion of attention from social media technostress to other posts may sound harmless to you but they can get you addicted to social media diversion that keeps you stuck. This is also a sort of addiction that makes you look for a short-term fix from the same platform which gives you social media technostress. The more usage of social media means the more you’ll look for diversions on the same platform to avoid technostress.
This concern for the negative effects of social media resulted in Government also taking notice and trying out different strategies to protect its citizens. The US lawmakers proposed the ban of social media features like infinite content feeds and autoplaying of videos to stop users from getting addicted to social apps in the first place.
Credit: Kizilkaya Photos Getty Images
Read next: What Makes Us Addicted to Social Media: The Psychology Behind Dependence (Infographic)
Research on technostress
According to almost every social user, the only solution to avoid social stress will be by removing an app or not using devices anymore. But according to recently published research, Users when facing the technostress and try to end it by stopping the usage pretty much end up getting more addicted to social apps than ever.Recently, 444 Facebook users from Germany were surveyed for more than three times within a year to help researchers find out their response to social media technostress. Sometimes, the results were similar to researchers expectations that they eventually diverted their attentions to some other unrelated activities but the most shocking response was seeing users trying to distract themselves from social media technostress by using social media even more than usual.
Social media apps and websites offer a variety of services and ways for users to engage them and that is the reason the social media apps are often called feature-rich technologies enabling users to play games, planning a holiday or reading news all within a single platform. These features allow users to view a single app in so many different ways. So, whenever a social media user feels technostress from a single post they can easily get away from that stress by diverting attention to some other pleasant posts within the app which results into more addiction to those apps.
The diversion of attention from social media technostress to other posts may sound harmless to you but they can get you addicted to social media diversion that keeps you stuck. This is also a sort of addiction that makes you look for a short-term fix from the same platform which gives you social media technostress. The more usage of social media means the more you’ll look for diversions on the same platform to avoid technostress.
This concern for the negative effects of social media resulted in Government also taking notice and trying out different strategies to protect its citizens. The US lawmakers proposed the ban of social media features like infinite content feeds and autoplaying of videos to stop users from getting addicted to social apps in the first place.
The effects of social media addiction on user behavior
Although social media was created to help users engage with a variety of new people and receive new opportunities but the usage of features for a longer time is also putting a huge impact on the behavior of the people. The usage of social apps and the reaction of users towards the posts shape harmful effects. If people see social media platforms as a stress creator but also as a stress reducer then it is most likely that they’ll rely more on social media platforms in response to the pressure it creates.Bottom Line
The first step to not get stuck in the loop of social media platforms is by awareness. If we have more insight into our reactions to social media posts it will help us remove the harmful effects and avoid the usage of social media in a harmful way. If next time, you see yourself suffering from technostress of social media, it is better to completely move away from your phone for a while rather than searching for other pleasant posts on the same app because if you do, you’ll be stuck in the loop of social media addiction before you even know it.
Credit: Kizilkaya Photos Getty Images
Read next: What Makes Us Addicted to Social Media: The Psychology Behind Dependence (Infographic)
