This article was written by BCC Counselor Brandon Lowery as part of our new series on addiction. In this series, our counselors are sharing how everyone can understand, overcome, and find freedom from addiction.
My twelve-year-old son looked up with a sheepish frown as I walked into his bedroom. He was gripping the smartphone we had gifted him a couple of months prior.
He wasn’t looking at anything inappropriate, yet he confessed, “I just feel like I can’t put it down. I don’t understand – Why does it feel like this?” We sat down on the edge of his bed and talked. Much of this article is the conversation we had on that Tuesday evening.
Technology, especially social media, is addictive. In fact, social media is deliberately designed to be addictive – think video poker slot machine addictive.
Association between social media usage and depression, anxiety, isolation, and suicide are common fare. Just this spring, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Snap, Apple, and Google due to the alleged abuse and grooming of a victim between the ages of 12 and 16.
It is no longer enough to simply identify social media as a pain point in parenting.
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