Social Media Addiction and Souls That Find Peace in Likes

Social media is now one of the daily rituals we can’t give up. Like praying to a creator, our souls find peace the more we use it. The whole adventure starts in the morning before we’ve even gotten out of bed. Its name is the first one we invoke in bed, head buried in the pillow, one eye still unable to open from sleep. Throughout the day, again, its name is the one we invoke most. When we don’t check it for twenty minutes, we get uneasy; our hands start to shake, we start to feel bad. The dose doesn’t matter: once its effect starts flowing through our veins, we relax, life regains its color, even if only for a short while, and we understand that we can rest easy now until the next dose.

The transformation and change that communication tools have gone through over the course of history have, without a doubt, led to changes that set the direction of human history as well. From the invention of the printing press to the invention of the telephone, all these developments paved the way for changes not only in how people communicate but also in their daily lives. With every new communication technology, our way of life changed a little more. Isn’t the question ‘How did we live without mobile phones?’ one of the most dramatic signs of this change? Today, never mind taking mobile phones out of our lives, we can’t stand being away from them for half an hour. Really, how did we live without mobile phones?

Technology, sitting in the driver’s seat of our lives, longs to take us to entirely different lands every day, and we have handed it full control without the slightest hesitation.

With the development of technology, the time it takes to reach masses on a large scale is getting dizzyingly shorter. From the invention of the telephone to today, the time it takes to reach 50 million people has dropped from 75 years to 35 days. We’re inside a vehicle moving at high speed; normally we should feel sick and throw up, but the walls built by virtual reality give us all the feeling that we’re standing still. Only when we stick our heads out the window do we understand how fast we’re going.

As for social media, it is one of the biggest innovations that changing communication technologies have brought into our lives, and it’s at least as important as the invention of the printing press or the telephone. Even in regions of the world where clean water or enough food, in other words basic needs, can’t be provided, you can see social media being used. When we look at the motivation behind this change, we can see that people feel the need to be there out of the reflex to exist, to be able to feel their own existence. For all of us, social media now means something beyond just a communication tool.

The photo above was taken in Syria last week. Behind the man in the photo climbing onto buildings destroyed after the bombing and raising his hand into the air, there is no message to his enemies that we haven’t been brought down. His only aim is to climb to the highest point he can reach so that his mobile phone gets a signal. Even after an attack on his very existence, to meet his need to connect to the outside world.

With our lives changing along with developing technology, we are all individuals growing a little lonelier each day, losing our way despite thousands of signposts reminding us where to go, and, while falling off a cliff, trying with one last reflex to cling to the last branch we can find. In an environment like this, social media is never just a communication tool. Nor is social media the root of all evil. What is undeniable, though, is that this new world, only just taking shape, needs a little time to be able to set its own rules.

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