I scored low on the social media disorder scale but still had a couple “yes” answers. For the most part, though, I don’t engage in too much social media activity. I think it has some interesting questions, but mostly targets those questions at a younger generation. I think they could change the questions to broaden the scope of people it would apply to. For example, instead of “during the past year have you had serious conflict with your parents, brother(s) or sister(s) because of your social media use?” they could say “during the past year have you had serious conflict with your parents, siblings, spouse, children, roommates, or close friends because of your social media use?”. This question would apply to older people as well as young while the original question targeted mainly young people.

I think there are different patterns of social media use across the world. This might be true for a few reasons. First, some societies prioritize in-person interactions more than others. This means they would have less time to spend on social media if they are busier spending time with other people. Other societies emphasize spending more time outside or more time doing activities. This also means that they would have less time to spend on social media. Still other societies might simply limit the time spent on social media or the content that is on social media sites for its own sake. If the type of media allowed on an app is limited, it might be less appealing to people and they will use less of it. People who spend less time online and on social media are probably more likely to score low on the social media disorder scale. This is, in my opinion, because less time probably correlates with a smaller, less significant impact on their lives. Therefore, if people, myself included, don’t want social media to play a significant role in their lives, they should be careful not to devote too much time to it.