Interrogating the difficulty of staying off social media: 'It's similar to addiction'

Gugs Mhlungu spoke to resident Clinical Psychologist, Dr Khosi Jiyane.

Listen to their conversation in the audio clip below.

Despite being aware of its impact on mental health, many struggle to stay away from social media.

Jiyane says these platforms have somewhat hijacked us mentally in terms of what things we need to focus on.

She adds that research indicates that scrolling through social media activates the feel-good hormone, dopamine.

"It turns out that it's not necessarily the meaningfulness of the content but just that stimulus of being on the phone because you could be watching the most mindless things but it activates the dopamine and therefore that is why people will stay on the phone even though we know there is zero value in the stuff that we are consuming but we continue nevertheless."

- Dr Khosi Jiyane, Clinical Psychologist

Most people consume social media on their phones, with phones becoming the most intimate object that people have, explains Jiyane.

"The moment we open our eyes, our hands reach out too - we want to know what's happening in my world and the world is in my phone. In the meantime, there's somebody next to you who has become secondary, the people in our lives to a great extent have become secondary to the object of the phone. "

- Dr Khosi Jiyane, Clinical Psychologist

"By virtue of having the world in the palm of our hand, we have become lazy. We've become mindless, we've become indiscriminate in our consumption because it's all there - we are flooded with everything."

- Dr Khosi Jiyane, Clinical Psychologist

Jiyane points out that there's nothing random or coincidental with our phones and the way our attention is being attracted and retained by these social media platforms.

She believes there is an entire psychology behind it.

"It is designed to make us mindless. It is designed to alienate ourselves from ourselves and to be hooked - it is similar to an addiction of sorts."

- Dr Khosi Jiyane, Clinical Psychologist

"People are not looking at each other anymore, people are with their eyes on the screen." 

- Dr Khosi Jiyane, Clinical Psychologist

Jiyane emphasises that we have to set boundaries for ourselves when it comes to the usage of our phones and social media and that we should hold ourselves accountable to those boundaries.

"The content or the bombardment and intrusion is not going to change, it's not going away - this is the nature of the beast. We need to maintain the sanity ourselves because leaving it to the gadgets is the worst form of social suicide we will commit."

- Dr Khosi Jiyane, Clinical Psychologist

Scroll up to listen to the full interview.