A comparison of a typical week with social media and without. You can see that overall screen time changed very little. The difference is a couple of hours. When I disconnected from social media, I just transferred that screen time to something else. Namely Google and Group chats. When I have Facebook, my phone usage is typically in the morning while I'm convincing myself to get out of bed. While having coffee and waiting for the dogs to finish their morning routine. In between classes when I'm walking across campus or waiting for class. Those times didn't change without social media, they just shifted to newsfeeds and group chats.I tend to disagree that screentime is inherently bad. I think every new "technology," dating back to the written word, has had detractors. Socrates thought books would make people stupid. If you didn't need to remember information because it was written down for you, you'd just get lazy. Movies would make people not want to read if they could get their entertainment from a screen. Now the internet and social media are bad.Even though very few college students today know what it was like to research without the internet (when I was in high school there was no internet. The first time I attended college, internet sources were not seen as accurate or acceptable.) Every time a new method of mass media evolved, someone was around to tell the public about its dangers. The argument that this new technology is bad for us, is nothing new. When the telephone was invented, newspapers reported on its dangers, going so far as to claim we'd all become "left eared"
For me, my phone is the lifeline to my friends and family. I did not grow up here. All of my family and most of my friends are in other states. When we are together, I'm not on the phone, but when we are apart, we depend on the internet, and social media, in particular, to stay in touch.
Could I walk away from social media and still keep in contact with these people? Absolutely, but "screen time" is convenient.
I know there is a compelling argument that too much screen time for young kids is bad, and I understand that, but at the same time, kids today will need to keep up with the new technology. I don't see internet and smartphones going away. If anything, they will become more prevalent.
As far as the question about addiction or cultural shift, I think I'm firmly on the side of cultural shift.
Like anything, it could become an addiction for some people. Some people claim to be addicted to shopping, but we don't expect the entire population to curb shopping habits. While some people get a dopamine boost seeing those Facebook notifications, others can look at that little red dot with the numbers climbing and never be inclined to look at it (these people are weird.)
