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 parents They are concerned that their son or daughter spends a good part of the day focusing their attention on these digital platforms. Fortunately, Psychology gives several keys to help you overcome this kind of addiction.

• Related article: "The 3 stages of adolescence"

How to act before young people who make excessive use of social networks?

Earlier we commented 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, they are statistically characteristic of adolescence and post-adolescence:

• They are more interested in gaining the acceptance and admiration of their peers.
• They are interested in controlling the image that others have of oneself.
• They want to be up to date and not lag behind the dominant themes and aesthetics.
• A good part of their forms of socializing already takes place on the Internet.
• They are more vulnerable to discomfort due to lack of self-confidence, and on the Internet they can have an “avatar”.

As we have seen, adolescence is generally defined, among other things by apparently opposing forces: the desire to stand out and while fitting 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 netizens. 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 the 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 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 an adolescent, and if this problem results in conflicts in the family, family therapy is another option to consider account. However, beyond that there are several tips that can help young people to “unhook”. They are as follows.

1. Establish schedules and support compliance

Totally banning a teenager from using social media is, in most cases, a bad idea: surely most of your circle of friends use these platforms regularly to communicate with each other, to meet, to talk about common experiences, etc.

Therefore, you will surely end up "bypassing" that prohibition in some way and not even trying to stop using these social networks excessively, seeing as an imposition everything related to that endeavor.

It is best to set limits on the amount of time you should spend using social media, and see it as a quantitative, not qualitative change: you will be able to continue doing everything you have already been doing, only with more moderation.

• You may be interested in: "FOMO syndrome: feeling that the lives of others are more interesting"

2. Help you make the most of the time you gain

To be involved in this process, it is important to help you focus on the positive that you achieve.

The most visible advantage of disengaging from social networks is having more time, so do some calculations together about the hours he will earn by limiting his use of these platforms, and plan a moment or two a week that you can dedicate to doing something that you like beyond the screens (activities with or without your participation).

Once that is done, propose that he set himself the goal of having those moments, physically putting them on his schedule; from this moment you will have a constant reminder of how to manage your time, and you will learn to value it.

3. Help you detect times 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 only use it because it is always there, it is accessible in a matter of two seconds and it gives us stimuli with ease. Therefore, it is a source of constant distractions, although we would do better to use that time in other ways.

Therefore, think together about those moments of the day when he uses the smartphone even without feeling like it. In this way you can prevent these situations and avoid that the mobile is a temptation. For example: is it really unnecessary for you to use the phone as an alarm clock, making you literally spend the first few minutes of the day looking at a screen?

4. Set an example

It's very important lead by example and show him that it is perfectly possible not to always be using social networks.

Are you looking for psychological assistance?

If you are interested in starting a psychotherapy process or if you are looking for advice related to the upbringing and education of your children, get in touch with us.

On Advance Psychologists We have been offering our services to people with all kinds of problems in the management of emotions or patterns for more than 20 years. behavior, and currently we not only work through face-to-face sessions, but we also offer online therapy by video call.

Bibliographic references:

• Karim, F.; Oyewande, A.A.; Abdalla, L.F.; Ehsanullah, R.C.; Khan, S. (2020). Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Cureus, 12 (6): e8627.
• Pantic, I. (2014). Online Social Networking and Mental Health. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 17 (10), 652-657.
• Scott, H. and Clelland, H. (2019). Understanding Links Between Social Media Use, Sleep and Mental Health: Recent Progress and Current Challenges. Current Sleep Medicine Reports, 5 (3), 141-149.