Social media have made many positive impacts in connecting people, keeping us up-to-date to latest issues, and spread valuable knowledge. But it also can be used in the wrong way such as public shaming and overused by its users. I believe everyone has experienced the struggle to disconnect with many different types of social pages.
Here's the signs if you are addicted to social media :
1. Priority and Privacy - You forgot to perform important task or responsibility such as assignments,exercising or praying because you are too busy checking out and refreshing the page. You think about what to write for your status/tweets/ Instagram caption and photo for every minute in your life. You want to broadcast everything that happens in your daily life.
2. Time - You occupy your time with scrolling the page even when you are cooking, eating, in the toilet, and wherever/whenever you possibly can. You didn’t mind spending hours browsing it every day, neglecting many responsibility,good deeds or productive tasks that can be done with those time.
3. You need to constantly refresh/check out if anybody will like/share/comment your post.
4. The intention of sharing tips/knowledge/reminders is not sincere and has the element of showing off.
5. You lied/sharing untruthful knowledge (especially relating to Al Quran and Hadith), whether deliberately or unintentionally. People need to know that Internet is generally not the greatest source for anything at all.
6. You tried to portray something of yourself that is not true, for esteem reason.
7. You craved for some positive feedbacks/praise and take the negative feedbacks to heart, making assumptions that these people don't actually like you.
8. You love to backbite, slaughter each other's good name by making comments with harsh words to humiliate certain people.
9. Giving advice directed clearly (tagged) towards somebody but making it accessible for public, things that can humiliate the person.
10. Compromising real social life, did not like to join social gathering, society activities etc.
11. Feeling anxious when the internet went down/not accessible.
12. Always procrastinate. Doing things last minute…too caught up with 'important' news from friends.
Now that we have or have not established whether you are indeed,addicted to these social networks, you should do something about it. Deleting/deactivating FB might be too extreme for some of us, thus do small things instead such as:
1. Only open FB when everything else are done (as a reward).
2. Set the time (E.g: Every day, I can only check my FB for one hour). Use the alarm. Use the time wisely and responsibly (no harsh/lies comments or status).
3. Prioritise: your responsibility always comes first. Do not open the social page if you have not finish your assignments or certain tasks yet at that time.
4. Have the right intention. For Muslims,Say Bismillah before you start.
5. Only share, update, and like status that are not against syara'. Do not share photos that are not complying with Islam, or share things that you are not sure of (eg did not cover aurah, did not check whether hadith is fake/sahih, etc). Double check everything that you found online.
6. No Facebook in family time and before bedtime (Meditate,listen to good music or for Muslims,use the time to recite Al Mulk and As Sajdah instead).
7. Show great manners online and offline. Here's an easy rule:if you will not do it in real life,please don't do it online.
Allahua'lam.
I. Ibrahim, Muslim Psych.
Izaidah Ibrahim is a psychologist residing here in Cork who can't imagine live without her cat named Ginger.
