Next New Zealand – September 2019

Do your social media feeds leave you

hungry for more? Sharon Stephenson

talks to two New Zealand women who

reclaimed their time from tech addiction

• and tells how you can too

CAUGHT IN

e web

H

ave you heard the one about

the woman who was so

addicted to Instagram she

didn’t notice her eight-

month-old baby had fallen down the stairs?

It’s actually no joke: this horrifying

accident happened last year to a London

mother of two, who admitted to UK media

she was mindlessly scrolling through her

phone and “sucked into the Instagram

vacuum” when her baby crawled onto

the landing.

“I heard a thud, then a cry,” said the

34-year-old. “Transxed by my phone, my

brain took a couple of seconds to realise

that she’d tumbled down the stairs.

I hadn’t even noticed she was out of sight.”

Fortunately, the baby was ne, her fall

broken by the steps. However, the woman

was not. “I was riddled with guilt,” she said.

“I could have hurt or killed my child, and

for what? For some meaningless nonsense

on social media.”

As anyone with even rudimentary

knowledge of social media knows, it’s easy

to get sucked into a vortex of holiday snaps,

cute puppies and whatever the heck that

person you met once years ago is having

for breakfast. Especially when it’s so

ubiquitous: gures show that around

three billion people, or 40% of the

world’s population, use online social

media, spending a couple of hours

every day sharing, liking and tweeting

on these platforms. Here in New Zealand,

it’s estimated around 3.5 million of us,

or 74% of the population, are social

media users.

SOUNDS LIKE FUN?

In his 2017 book Irresistible: The Rise

of Addictive Technology and the Business of

Keeping Us Hooked, psychologist Adam Alter

suggests 88% of us can be classied as

‘overusers’, meaning we spend more than

an hour each day on our phones. He

says some of us spend more time on

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat

than any other daily activity, apart

from sleeping.

It’s not hard to see why: in the past

decade or so, eavesdropping on the lives of

people we love, envy and are never likely to

meet has become a cornerstone of modern

communication. Social media, say

researchers, allows us to connect with

others, create a sense of belonging and

dene who we are and how we live. »

SEPTEMBER 2019 / NEXT 29

TALKING POINT