Teenagers and young adults are becoming slaves of technology. In the past, when social media and the Internet were first created, they were intended to connect people and provide more accesses to information. Despite having such useful functions, social media is ironicly making teens less sociable which is resulted from addiction. In psychology, addiction is a term for a person engaging in an activity that he/she finds pleasurable and continuously or even compulsively doing it to the extent that it interferes with ordinary life responsibilities, such as work, relationship, and health. The goal of connectivity of social media has been perverted, leading to unhealthy lifestyle and many future harmful effects on teenagers. Behind the scenes, teenagers are motivated by several desires and psychological factors. With severe consequences, Internet addiction is being considered as a disorder. The abusive use and addiction to social media and the Internet make young adults less sociable regardless of their original intentions.


Social media has created the phenomenon of disconnectivity through connectivity. While the purpose of social media is to bring people closer together, people have become addicted and tend to develop shallow relationships. The difference between bondings of friends and virtual communication is distinctive, “While we have hundreds of Facebook friends-- people we never would have met otherwise, with whom we can share many new things-- do they really provide the kind of human interaction that is so essential to our emotional health?” (WSJ 14). Social media has created a virtual world for people to connect more with others who might not be in their lives, but less with those who actually care about us and are closer to us. Real and virtual worlds certainly overlap. Some friends on the devices can also be friends in real life. The opportunities to have deeper relationships are becoming scarce due to the excessive time being put into the virtual world. Furthermore, having an intimate relationship, such as physically hanging out with a best friend and going on a romantic date with the loved one, is extremely important to everybody’s emotional health. With smartphones in hand starting from a young age certainly brings a problem, “The problem, they say, is that we spend so much time maintaining superficial connections online that we aren’t dedicating enough time or effort to cultivating deeper real-life relationships” (WSJ 3). Teenagers have been put into a habit of checking for alerts, notifications, vibrations, and being constantly aware of their phones’ existences when nothing urgent is in the way, such as a like on one of the pictures they just posted or a greeting message from one of the applications. Young adults have little free time other than their obsession and believe that they are being physically active, but they are only getting minimal amount of connection that is negligible. Some may argue that, “We can expand our social horizons online, deepening our connections to the world around us, and at the same time take advantage of technology to make our closest relationship even closer” (WSJ 4). This can be beneficial when people are taking advantages of technologies to genuinely further develop the relationship that matters to them. When the first phone was only an imagination, people had to take risks to visit the people they wanted to see. Longer distance relationships were almost impossible to keep. Many came up with various and cumbersome ways: pigeons, posts, telephone, mails, light signals. Social media has definitely made lives of socializing easier, however, teens in the modern age are no longer cherishing the social ties between people and spend their precious age online to socialize and isolated from the face-to-face interaction.


There are many factors and signs that lead into addiction to Internet and social media. Behind the drive of teenagers’ addictive behaviors online, they are motivated by several reasons. Because teens are not adults who live and work in the real world yet, they have curiosity and desire to be a part of the world that has not been fully exposed to them. Driven by their desires, teenagers have found the way through networked publics, “Teens engage with networked publics for the same reasons they have always relished publics; they want to be a part of the world by connecting with other people and having the freedom of mobility” (Boyd 51). Young adults seek for attention, ways to express themselves, and become noticed by others. The social networks are like windows to the unknown. Social media services are new opportunities to the pros and cons of public life, which concerns many anxious parents. As the adults and parents become increasingly alert about their children’s online movement, they would certainly hope to know better on exactly what their teens are doing. But at the same time and the opposite side, the teenagers want to hide it. Thus, privacy becomes an important factor that keeps and drives teens to be active on Internet and social media, “Many teens feel as though they’re in a no-win situation when it comes to sharing information online: damned if they publish their personal thoughts to public spaces, and damned if they created private space that parents can’t see” (Boyd 68). Teens often grow frustrated as adults assuming that they are parts of a generation who are possessed by video games and social medias, eschewing privacy for participation in social media. What teens have been commonly doing online are sure indicators of their unbalanced worship for or rejection of privacy. Most importantly, the addictive nature of networked publics is the reason to teens becoming less sociable in the real world, researchers found, “Teens told me time and again that they would far rather meet up in person, but the hectic and heavily scheduled nature of their day to day lives, their lack of physical mobility, and the fears of their parents have made such face to face interactions increasingly impossible” (Boyd 11).The networks have four different characteristics that traditional physical public spaces do not have, “They are: persistence, visibility, spreadability, and searchability” (Boyd 25). Each post, picture, and message that people share on the social media is kept forever which makes social media more attractive for their persistence. Through social media, people can easily share and have accesses to others, which increases the potential visibility of just about anything. Ultimately, social media is made for people to spread information, whether by directly or implying to encourage sharing, using of the favorite tools, or copy and pasting content from one site to another. Therefore, activities are exposed and spread easily with only a few clicks of the keyboard. Since the rise of search engines, anything can be found and is searchable. Because social medias and Internet have brought so much convenience, people are discarding the true real life communications and replacing them with online addictions.


Being addicted to the Internet and social media can leave harmful effects that will affect teenagers’ lives and health tremendously in the future. Teenagers who are constantly online are more than likely to be exposed to and vulnerable to harmful sites and informations that are unhealthy to their emotional growth. And physically, in general, addiction decreases movements and physical exercises, which can cause obesity and other health issue. An expert in Internet addiction sums up the harmful side, “It has devastating effects on the lives of addicts and their families: divorce, jobless, falling productivity at work, failure in school, and, in extreme cases, criminal behavior” (Young 2). As teenagers spend more and more time online, their motivations to participate in physical activities drop drastically. The negative impacts will be showing as they age. Teens also try to use technologies to gain popularity and garner attention while being in the mediated environment, but in ways that may be either enlightening or hurtful. This creates danger and increases cyber bullying. In addition, the findings showed that sedentary behaviors increased nearly 25-50 percent from 1999 to 2004, “The increase in sedentary activities combined with the decrease in physical activity is thought to be associated with increased risk for obesity” (SD 2). Obesity is just one of the many pains teenagers will experience in the future if they do not heal from addictions. Not only can it result in obesity, high risk Internet using can also lead to irregular dietary behavior and frequently skipping meals. The students' levels of Internet addiction and their lifestyle patterns are closely tied with one another.


Internet addiction has been recently classified as a disorder that needs to be healed and given attention to. Treatment to Internet addiction is not like that of alcohol or drug. It is more like a food addiction. The healing process is seeking for a result of controlled positive use of Internet and social media. A new way to treat Internet addiction is “digital diet and digital nutrition”(TedxBuffalo). It literally draws an analogy between dieting and controlled technology using. Digital dieting puts a restriction on the number of hours spent online, just as nutritional dieting restricts on the number of calories one consumes. Teenagers have to have self discipline in order to overcome the urge to overly surfing on social media: instead of checking Facebook 50 times a day, check it only one time a day. For someone who is failing school, living at home with parents because a job cannot be fulfilled, he/she needs to forcefully sustain from clicking and use internet only for practical tasks. Just like comparing eating potato chips to fruits and vegetables, which one is better for the body? Teenagers need to realize their needs and responsibilities, and then make wiser choices based upon their obligations. Being productive is the key to success for teens, “To better manage technology everyday: first, check your checking; second, set time limits; third, disconnect to reconnect” (TedxBuffalo). The three steps mean to make efforts to know the addictive routine by calculating times of checking on the phones or computers, controlling the urge, and be present with the people around, engage with a person while making a conversation. Before instinctively taking out technologies, ask “Is it really important to keep checking on that cell phone all the time?” As much as teenagers think they can multitask, they can not. On the other hand, influences from families and outside environments are crucial. Parents need to set example and model for their children, set a boundary. They should start a two day digital detox movement with their children and teenagers. People do not realize how addicted they are to technology until they feel the renewed energy and time again when living without technologies. Teenagers have learned to live without boredom. Rules like no devices on the dinner table and having text free time with families set teenagers apart from the mentally illed disorder and isolations. The world has become aware of the questions, “How much time is too much? How young is too young?” (TedxBuffalo). Because of the lacking performance of the youths, the nation and the government took initiative and recognition to Internet addiction. Korea has over 500 in patient units for treating the disorder. Every school had prevention programs. Proposals like Screen-Smart hopes to train teacher and parents to set guideline for children at different ages. Indeed, the improvements made in technology is a gift to the people. While benefitting from having Internet, teenagers need balanced lives without being consumed by it.


Internet surfing can be an interest for teenagers. Using the Internet appropriately is in fact beneficial, serving as one of the best ways possible to stay connected with the rest of the world. However, abusive usage has caused more and more young adults to become increasingly addicted to using Internet and social media which is being concerned as a mental illness that needs attention and cures. Technology addiction does not only have an impact on the futures of the young people, but also in a broader sense consequently affects the society if the futures of teenagers are ruined.

Works Cited
“Is Technology Making People Less Sociable?” WSJ. The Wall Street Journal, n.d. web. 10 Feb. 2016: .
Boyd, Danah. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. N.P.: n.p., n.d. Print.
Price, Michael. “Alone in the Crowd.” APA. American Psychological Association, n.d. web. 10 Feb. 2016. .
Roberts, Kevin J. Cyber Junkie: Escape the Gaming and Internet Trap. Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2010. Print.
Sax, Leonard. Boys Adrift: The Five Factors Driving the Growing Epidemic of Unmotivated Boys and Underachieving Young Men. New York: Basic, 2007. Print.
TedxTalk. "What You Need to Know about Internet Addiction | Dr. Kimberly Young | TEDxBuffalo." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 29 Feb. 2016.
University of Minnesota. “Teens Spend More Time at computers, Become Less Active as They Grow Older.” Science Daily, 28 February 2007. .
Young, Kimberly S. Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction-- and a winning strategy for recovery. New York: J. Wiley, 1998. Print.
Young, Kimberly S., and Cristiano Nabuco De. Abreu. Internet Addiction: A Handbook and Guide to Evaluation and Treatment. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2011. Print.