Complete the Social Media Disorder scale. How did you score? What do you think about the items in the scale? Why do you think that different patterns are found across the world?
Here are my answers respectively to the questions (questions are long so only answers to the questions are provided): 1. No, 2. No, 3. No, 4. No, 5. Yes, 6. No, 7. No, 8. No, 9. No. These add up to a low score. Typically, I don’t use social media as often as I used to; I kind of use it as a filler between the things I do (work, homework, video games), or if I want to take a break from those things as well.
I think the items in the scale are a bit extreme; it sounds like it’s treating social media like drugs. It’s an understandable approach, though, as the questions asked could technically be applied to anything that is a distraction, like video games. For all of the questions, I could probably answer yes at some point in my life if social media was replaced with video games. The questions asked are a relatively good determination to figure out if a particular outlet may be an issue both now and in the future. Specifically for social media, it can become a pretty bad addiction because of the ease of access as well as the stimulation it can provide.
Different patterns are found across the world because different parts of the world have more or less access to the technology used to access social media. The U.S. is reliant on the internet for most things in daily life nowadays, and social media is commonly used as a source of promotion for products and companies as well as for personal use, so there will likely be a higher trend in social media usage. Then there are situations where social media is blocked on a government level, so there won’t be patterns at all, or the pattern is that there is no pattern if that makes sense. If I’m not mistaken, I believe North Korea restricts people from accessing social media, so it would be difficult to notice patterns regarding social media for situations similar to that.