A Clinical Psychologist, Mr Adedotun Ajiboye has warned that addiction to social media can cause both mental and physical health challenges.
Ajiboye, who works at the Ekiti State University Teaching Hospital, Ado-Ekiti, gave the warning in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday. Ajiboye identified social anxiety as one of the mental health consequences of social media addiction. According to him, social anxiety is the inability to relate with other people considering that it has displaced offline relationships.
Another consequence of social media addiction is emotional suppression or denial, a situation which makes people to disguise that all is well on social media. He listed other mental consequences to include stress, lack of sleep, cyberbullying (such as critical comments), and peer pressure (the fear of missing out).
He added that one of the ways to overcome social media addiction was to first identify there was a problem with social media adding that discovery brought about recovery. According to him, plan your time and data usage, when you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.
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