Social media addicts just wanna have fun but this culture of doing 'cool' stuff sprouted from social networking sites according to experts. While other generations surely had fun -the hippies had fun with concerts and their weed, while those who grew up in the 30s' definition of fun is to go dancing. For this generation, having fun means doing all sorts of 'cool' things -from waterboarding, to sandboarding, to literally going on a hike, or traversing the unbeaten path and documenting all that so that they can show it to their friends on social networking sites Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Baroness Greenfield of Oxford University believes that social networking sites such as Facebook can rewire how we think. The Daily Mail says, this rewiring can result to the inability to actually socialize in the real world.
Greenfield says, "What concerns me is the banality of so much that goes out on Twitter. Why should someone be interested in what someone else has had for breakfast? It reminds me of a small child saying: Look at me Mummy, I'm doing this, look at me Mummy I'm doing that." The former director of the Royal Institution's research body also adds, "It's almost as if they're in some kind of identity crisis. In a sense it's keeping the brain in a sort of time warp."
It's not just identity crisis that social media addicts are suffering from though because there is also clear evidence that peer pressure is also experienced while online. Whenever a friend on Facebook goes on vacation and he or she posts the photos of this particular holiday, one way or the other, some of this person's friend will be planning a vacation of their own.
This need to fit in is disturbing and as what Greenfield suggests, social media users have that urge to treat themselves like mini celebrities and only post things that are 'Facebook worthy' or 'Twitter worthy'. While social networking sites can be a push for some to go to places they've never been before, Greenfield says, "It's almost as if people are living in a world that's not a real world, but a world where what counts is what people think of you or if they can click on you."
