Talk yourself out of some addictions

In the old days parents worried a lot about childhood obesity because their kids were addicted to soft drinks, sweets and fast food. Whilst their love of these has not gone away, another addiction has reared its head after social media introduced short form content.

YouTube has ‘shorts’ and TikTok, Instagram and Facebook have reels. One can spend hours just swiping up to see what the next reel or short will be. Some have likened the feeling to an adrenaline rush because you don’t know what surprise you’re going to get.

And if you don’t like the reel in front of you, or it doesn’t speak to you, you can keep scrolling endlessly looking for your desired content.

And if one platform doesn’t give it to you, you just go ahead and try another.

In recent years, there is a disturbing rise in children and teens being addicted to these short form contents.

A lot of the learning these days is online classes and reading online content. But these online contents, which are far lengthier and detailed, are now in severe competition with those reels and short. Short form contents are designed to give you bit-sized information that’s supposed to be ‘digestible’.

Now, I read some time back that children seem to get a lot of their academic information from TikTok specifically. Why? Because TikTok contents are short and quick. Whether they are on point or even accurate is a different story.

I believe that many teachers would not turn their teaching material into a TikTok reel.

I just don’t feel they’d have the time. But many kids seem to be relying on them. Or are they? It could just be that they want it to appear as though they are watching this stuff for information as opposed to entertainment.

Health professionals have always been warning us that too much screen time is not only bad for our eyes but also for our brains. Our brains go into a kind of trance where it’s no longer thinking for itself or even pondering over things that need to be done.

This cannot be good for everyday life because things might never get done and it’s even worse when young people are studying for exams.

The scenario is a lot like this, ‘Oh let me see if I can find this information on TikTok or on an Instagram reel’ and, before they know it, they’re looking at everything and., in the process, have completely forgotten about the information they were originally looking for.

A lot of addiction experts are likening short form content to slot machines. People put a coin in to see if they win and when they don’t, they don’t stop there.

They try again and again and again. Whether they win or lose they are now addicted because they always think that maybe the next one will be a win.

The same thing happens with reels. You keep scrolling hoping your favourite reel pops up.

So how do you break this addiction, because that is what this behaviour is? Most people will never admit that it’s an addiction because, ‘I can stop doing this any time I want’. But the real test is to see what they do when their resolve weakens. Do they find something productive to do or do they just pick up their phone because it’s easier?

I have a friend who, many years ago, was under a lot of stress and to comfort herself she started sucking on very strong mints.

She said she went through packets of those in a day and was very worried that she could be overloading on sugar. But she talked herself out of it.

That is the key with adults who might be able to break an addiction by talking to themselves as though it were an external voice speaking to them.

That voice might say, hey John, what are you doing watching mindless stuff on the internet? Stop it right now.

Apparently, talking to yourself in this manner snaps you out of it. But it only works for stuff like this and not the really serious addictions like drugs and alcohol.