From the urgency in the title of this piece, you would expect that I am about to tell you something cataclysmic will happen if you don’t turn off your social media notifications. You would think I would say to you that notifications have been found to cause some rare cancer or something. I will not disappoint you: social media notifications drive addictions leading to mental health problems that are now being compared to climate change. Yeah, I said it; GO AND VERIFY. (I didn’t intend to say that!)
Social media is no longer social; it is a beast to control you and make you do what you do not want to be. Social media is no longer an organic means of generating social relationships or oiling them since the advent of the algorithm wars. Social media is now a tool for manipulating people for profit, political exploitation and big human experiments. This perspective sounds very negative, and you may agree with me when you hear why I think like this.
When I say you should turn off your social media notifications, the idea is counterintuitive (contrary to what commonsense tells those of us who have it). For most people, phones are always beeping or showing red notification signs that woo you to an urgent message or just saying something has happened that needs your attention. And we don’t turn them off, though we may temporarily do so when entering an embassy, the holiest of places in Nigeria where even the brashest and most outspoken Nigerian is humbled in expectation of a visa).
And I will digress a bit. Have you noticed that Nigerians are more humble and polite at embassies than in places of worship? Even lambs would be jealous of their humility. And I love the way our countrymen who are security guards and low-ranking staff of embassies exploit the situation to decree all manner of nonexistent rules there.
Well, back to our conversation about why our phones should go off. Once I auditedmy time expenditure in a day and found that mobile phones consume 2 or 3 hours each day for those who are very focused on work. For many, mobile phones consume as much as 6 to 8 hours daily, abouta quarter of one’s lifetime spent on a screen. And this excludes the time spent on sleep, eating, having a bath, watching football and talking about those making money from it(which is actually longer than watching the footballitself). We can then see that mobile phones are dealing with us in ways that we might never understand.
At the core of mobile phone addiction is social media. According to 2022 data, globally, people spend 2 hours and 27 minutes on social media daily. And there has been a steady rise over the last decade from just about 60 minutes to over 2 hours. This is correlated with the increase in social networks, social networking sites, and messaging apps which sit directly on our phones.They can also be related to the improve in networks you know from the regular 2G 3-g to 5G networks of late. Phones are also more available than ever and because they are for networking in means someone has to chat with the next and the other person is somewhat obligated to pick and respond to the messages being sent all the calls being made.
According to Statista, in 2021 Nigerians and Filipinos spent the most time on social media, on an average of over 4 hours per day. And trust us, you know we really take these things to extremes.We have scripture readings on social media;hours-long prayersessions, birthdays, weddings, and family meetings. If Statista looks in Nigeria’s direction this year, we will be approaching 6 hours per day on average for Nigeria.
But why are we so dependent on this?An emotional dependence occurs because of a substance called dopamine, whichtransmits messages responsible for making us feel good and we would like to have short bouts of it regularly. When our stuff gets retweeted or we have likes on her Facebook messages or nowadays reactions to WhatsApp messages,that makes you feel good and loved or relevant to the sector or group you belong to. So there is a psychological dependence that somewhat emerged because of those quick releases of dopamine. This is why the more people have got social media followers, the more addicted they are to how many likes, how many retweets, and how many replies they have for each post.
You use social media in a way that does not make you become a problem to yourself and society, because whenever you become addicted, your social life, in reality, does not get better. You are more likely to ignore reality; you are more likely to check your phones impulsively, and you’re more likely to lose track of time. This is not polite in our social environment, when you are talking to colleagues or senior persons, and you keep touching your phones. Needless to say that this is even worse when one is in a romantic relationship, and a partner needs attention.
It’s been years now since I last heard a WhatsApp message alert on my phone. I silenced them all, the digital dictator that I am! I check my phone every half hour or thereabouts to give me time to work. That way, I have greater control over the app than they have over me. So what do I recommend you do right now? First, you should audit your day and social media usage. How many social media apps do you have on your phone, and how many give you any form of visual or auditory notification? I would encourage you to turn off all notifications, or if you conduct the audit, you might decide which notifications are more useful depending on your job functions. Of course, you might also have imagined that I think social media is a waste of time in most cases even though we can justify why we need them. I have Instagram TiKToK, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many apps on my phone. But do I need all of these apps?If I do need all of them, by any chance, do I really need all of them to send me notifications that I’ve got a like I’ve got a friend who just posted something? Is that normal behavior? Let’s imagine that we are also mimicking real life with social media. Is it every time that your friend in real life does something that you get alerted that they are they’ve done it?Your friend writes a post in their diary; the friend tells you,”I have just written a post in my diary.”Is that it? Social media is not mimicking real life for us. The companies are just compelling us to put many materials out there that they are able to harvest and mine the information for their business interests.
Notifications create a sense of urgency.Not every message needs an immediate response. However, that’s what notification tends to stimulate one to do. “I need to give that person a piece of my mind. “A piece of your mind actually means a piece of your time, valuable time; essentially a piece of your life. The loss of inhibition that I earlier referred to has made many to be less critical of what they see online. This has led to many avoidable arguments and debates and even physical harm.
Social media has been implicated in mental health issues with many people unable to sleep after serial arguments and debates or binge-watching videos on social media.Some have tried to commit suicide or become depressed and cannot carry on with regular life. I hope anyone reading this is not on the verge of that. But a little action on your part can avoid it.