Social media can be addictive even for adults, but there are ways to cut back

SOCIAL media addiction has been compared to casinos, opioids and cigarettes.

- 

While there's some debate among experts about the line between overuse and addiction, and whether social media can cause the latter, there is no doubt that many people feel like they can't escape the pull of Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms.

The companies that designed your favorite apps have an incentive to keep you glued to them so they can serve up ads that make them billions of dollars in revenue. Resisting the pull of the endless scroll, the dopamine hits from short-form videos, and the ego boost and validation that come from likes and positive interactions, can seem like an unfair fight.

Much of the concern around social media addiction has focused on children, But adults are also susceptible to using social media so much that it starts affecting their day-to-day lives.

RECOGNIZING SIGNS OF COMPULSIVE USE

DR. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University's School of Medicine, defines addiction as “the continued compulsive use of a substance or behavior despite harm to self or others.”

Social media addiction is not recognized as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the standard reference psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners use to assess and treat patients. That's partly because there is no widespread consensus on what constitutes social media addiction and whether underlying mental health issues contribute to problematic use.