My name is Jerry, and I'm addicted to social media | Jerry Davich

Facebook. Instagram. TikTok. Snapchat. Threads. YouTube. X. You name it. Pick your poison. Or your obsession.

All of these “socials” can be dangerously addictive despite insistent claims from users who swear they can give it up at any time. I’ve heard similar promises from smokers, alcoholics, drug addicts, over-eaters and shopping junkies.

Facebook in particular is a habit-forming narcotic, especially for older users who refuse to try other socials that are typically used by younger audiences. As a 62-year-old man who’s been using Facebook for more than 15 years, I can attest to its addictive qualities.

I check my page too many times each day. I post too often about meaningless things. Every night just before midnight, without fail, I check my Facebook Memories page to see what I posted on that date in previous years. In fact, I use it as my digital diary, reminding me what I did, who I was with, and which newspaper column I shared that day.

How much social media is too much? Three hours a day is considered the threshold, experts say, revealing a problem. It’s easy to pass this marker without realizing it when algorithms constantly suggest content based on what a user has liked in the past.

Social media is brilliantly filled with rabbit holes designed to suck you into a timeless portal of regret disguised as reward.

I know many social media users who check their smartphone or digital device dozens of times each day to replicate the same feel-good but fleeting chemical reaction in their brain. It’s eerily similar to cocaine or heroin addicts who I’ve interviewed. It’s all about the next hit.

With social media, it’s all about the next click. The next post. The next video. The next reel. The next rush of digital dopamine.

A neighbor of mine, who’s outspoken and opinionated, told me he doesn’t use any social media sites, especially Facebook, because he’s worried of getting sucked into its vortex of addiction. He’s retiring soon and, with more time on his hands, he will likely get sucked in anyway.

It’s only a matter of time. Boredom breeds idol minds. Loneliness desperately searches for entertainment and engagement.

If you’re opinionated like my neighbor, social media can be a blessing or a curse. Possibly both on the same day. Maybe in the same post. I’ve seen it time and again on my many platforms, which I manage each day with multiple posts.

I currently use a handful of social media to share my work as well as photos, videos and story teasers. Neatly every day I post something on LinkedIn, Threads, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram, and multiple Facebook pages.

I enjoy engaging readers, sometimes enraging readers, and continually prompting them to consider alternate views beyond their own. I don’t care if they agree or not with my perspective.

In fact, I prefer it when they don’t because their comments offer me a peek at someone else’s view, values and reasoning. Or those comments reveal someone else’s prejudices, biases and fears. Either way, it’s amusing or enlightening.

I also use social media as a sort of online focus group for different topics, from abortion and politics to racism and illegal immigration’. A single post about any of these contentious subjects can generate dozens or hundreds of comments from readers across the country. It’s invaluable to me as a writer and as an amateur sociologist.

I use LinkedIn for more professional reasons, mostly to share my newspaper columns with the digital world. I’d rather initiate a constructive conversation than read another working professional’s obligatory prewritten compliment on their work anniversary. Ugh.

By far, my Facebook page attracts the most reader attention and feedback. It also attracts a peanut gallery of predictable characters whose comments verge on reprehensible. Through the years, I’ve had to block a few “friends,” typically for using curse words or calling other people names.

I love a spirited online conversation. I hate spiteful name-calling and childish rebuttals.

Too often we are stuck with digital discussions between people who’ve either forgotten or haven’t learned how to engage in a verbal, face-to-face conversation using civility and respect while actually listening to someone else’s point of view.

Social media addiction is not only accepted as casual entertainment, it’s so pervasive that we don’t realize it’s a problem. It’s like one alcoholic at a bar calling another one a drunk. Either they’re in denial or they’re too drunk to understand the irony.

For too many users, it’s all about escapism — from their marriage, from their kids, from their troubles, from their lives. Trouble is, too often their choice of escapism from their life turns into, well, their life. Just ask an addict of any substance.