Social media can indeed be very addictive. To begin to deal with this or any addictive situation it’s good to understand the underlying mechanics. Ideally one would speak to a professional but sometimes it takes awhile to get to that point or, for various reasons, it’s not a viable course of action.
I happened across this video on YT awhile ago and while I thought I had a pretty good understanding of the dopamine response seeing it discussed like this – placed on real world, human situations – made things “click” for me a bit better. https://youtu.be/9QiE-M1LrZk
I did further reading and found that there are some pretty bad ways to “dopamine fast” so if you do decide to do something like this ensure you do so in a healthy fashion. And don’t kick yourself if you end up “cheating” on whatever method you chose. Baby steps are better than no steps.
Also, no matter what anyone says, don’t ever feel like you must use social media. It’s not for everyone. Even if you can balance your time spent there is always the issue of the toxicity that exists in such spaces which presents another challenge to our mental health.
