How To Manage Excessive Use Of Social Networks In Young People And Adolescents
Social networks are tools with great potential to connect with others and to spread and receive ideas, but they also have their negative side. One of them is the ease with which we “get hooked” on them, even giving rise to dependency problems, practically addictions based on repetitive behaviors.
The young population is especially vulnerable to this type of behavior patterns, and that is why many fathers and mothers They see with concern that their son or daughter spends a good part of the day focusing their attention on these digital platforms Luckily, Psychology gives several keys to help them overcome this type of addiction.
How to act when faced with young people who make excessive use of social networks?
Before we mentioned that young people are more likely to overuse social networks to the point of let them absorb your attention This is mainly due to these elements that, although they do not have to occur in all of them individually, are statistically characteristics of adolescence and post-adolescence:
As we have seen, adolescence is generally defined, among other things, by apparently opposing forces: the desire to stand out and at the same time fit in, the stress of not revealing personal insecurities and at the same time the pressure to have a public presence in front of thousands. of Internet users. Social networks play with these dynamics creating both the promise of exciting incentives (mass acceptance) and the fear of “being left out of the game”, which is known as FOMO syndrome (from the English “fear of missing out”).
On the other hand, if we add to this that social networks take advantage of the information that their millions of users pour into them to offer an experience that is as personalized and addictive as possible, the result is that many young people practically live by and for these platforms.
What to do about this, as parents, guardians or educators? The ideal is to resort to child and adolescent therapy if we have detected a case of excessive use of social networks by a teenager, and if this problem translates into conflicts in the family, family therapy is another option to take into account. However, beyond that there are several tips that can help young people “disengage.” They are the following.
1. Establish schedules and provide support in compliance
Banning a teenager from using social media completely is, in most cases, a bad idea: Surely most of your circle of friends regularly uses these platforms to communicate with each other, to meet up, to talk about common experiences, etc.
Therefore, you will surely end up “skipping” that prohibition in some way and not even trying to stop using these social networks excessively, seeing everything related to that endeavor as an imposition.
It’s best to set limits on the amount of time you should spend using social media, and view it as a quantitative change, not a qualitative one: you’ll be able to continue doing everything you’ve already been doing, just in more moderation.
2. Help you take advantage of the time you gain
To get him involved in this process, it is important to help him focus on the positive things he achieves from it.
The most visible advantage of disengaging from social networks is having more time so do calculations together about the hours you will gain by limiting your use of these platforms, and plan a moment or two a week that you can dedicate to doing something you like beyond the screens (activities with or without your participation) .
Once that is done, suggest that he set himself the goal of having those moments, physically putting them in his schedule; From this moment on you will have a constant reminder of how you should manage your time, and you will learn to value it.
3. Help you detect moments when you use your smartphone unnecessarily
The smartphone is an electronic device that many times we simply use without thinking about whether it is really necessary ; We use it only because it is always there, it is accessible in a matter of two seconds and it easily provides us with stimuli. Therefore, it is a source of constant distractions, even though we would do better to spend that time in other ways.
Therefore, reflect together on what are those moments of the day when you use your smartphone even if you don’t feel like it. This way you can prevent these situations and prevent your cell phone from being a temptation. For example: is it really unnecessary for you to use your phone as an alarm clock, causing you to spend literally the first few minutes of the day staring at a screen?
4. Set an example
It’s very important lead by example and show you that it is perfectly possible not to always be using social networks.
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