The Social Addict

For the out-of-control social media user

Alan D. Weber PH.D.

Do you think that you're addicted to social media? Why or why not? Is there even such a thing as a social media addiction? If so, what are its signs or symptoms, as well its effects? And what about its interventions? Also called Social Networking Addiction or SNA, social media addiction is the latest form of addiction to have emerged as a result of technological advancement brought about by the Internet. But even if it's considered new in the realm of clinical sciences, it's actually an all too familiar phenomenon in the behavioral sciences.

People are curious if their behavior as they relate with social media networking can be classified as an addiction, or something more saliently related to it. That begs the question: how can one not know that he or she is addicted to something? Awareness is an important factor in acknowledging a looming addictive behavior - something that online pop tests cannot 'test.'
This book offers practical intervention measures in order to minimize the possibility of you becoming a social media addict - or how to overcome such an addiction, if you consider yourself as an addict. In the end, this book seeks to inform, to educate, and to offer ways to help young people out there realize that there's more to the world than scrolling through their social media feed.
Thank you, and I hope you'll learn a lot from this book.

Alan D. Weber has held teaching positions at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, Austen Riggs Center, and the Center for Advanced Studies of the Behavioral Sciences. He published a number of books on human behavior. He is the author of the bestselling "How To Deal With Depression".