How to overcome social media addiction

Bangladesh has turned out to be one of the top three countries where people are most active on Facebook. It is preceded by respectively India and the Philippines, according to a report released by Facebook's parent company Meta. The report said an average of two billion people across the world logged in to Facebook at least once every day in December 2022. The figure is one-fourth of the total population of the world. Of them, people of India, the Philippines and Bangladesh used the social media platform the most.
Younger people in our country are spending excessive amounts of time on Facebook, which is affecting their development. The excess use of this social media has been trapping the youth in an addictive cycle. The limitless scrolling continues people's addiction and simultaneously fuels the platform's profitability. This is a matter of great concern.
To reduce social media usage, people should establish clear goals such as setting time limits, avoiding social media during work, study, or family time and disabling non-essential notifications to reduce the urge to check social media constantly. In addition, we should take breaks from social media, unfollow accounts or pages that contribute to negative feelings and pursue other hobbies such as sports, reading, etc. This can help one get out of this vicious cycle. The government should initiate awareness campaigns to educate the public about the potential harms of excessive social media usage, including digital literacy and responsible social media use in school curricula, implement regulations that promote responsible usage of social media platforms, encourage development and promotion of parental control tools that allow parents to monitor and restrict their children's social media usage and allocate resources to support addiction treatment and counselling programmes for the individuals struggling with social media addiction.

Sirazi Shahjahan,
Malibagh, Dhaka,
mshaju001@gmail.com