Social Media Madness How To Maintain Your Sanity In A Digital World

Social media has become an integral part of our lives, shaping the way we communicate, connect, and consume information. However, this digital world has also brought with it a set of challenges and risks that can impact our mental health and overall well-being. This book, "Social Media Madness: How to Maintain Your Sanity in a Digital World," aims to provide a comprehensive guide to navigating the world of social media while preserving your mental health and personal boundaries. It will delve into the dark side of social media, exploring its impact on mental health and addiction, and offer practical tips on how to cope with FOMO and comparison envy. The book will also emphasize the importance of mindful social media use, highlighting the benefits of building and maintaining positive relationships online and identifying and combating cyberbullying and online harassment. It will also discuss ways to protect your privacy and security on social media and the significance of finding balance and setting boundaries. Furthermore, the book will explore the benefits of disconnecting from social media and the importance of taking breaks to reconnect with the real world. It will also provide best practices and etiquette for navigating social media in the workplace. Whether you are a social media enthusiast, a concerned parent, or a professional navigating the digital world, this book is a must-read for anyone looking to maintain their sanity and well-being in a world dominated by social media.

From the author of the provocative and influential Glow Kids, Digital Madness explores how we’ve become mad for our devices as our devices our driving us mad, as revolutionary research reveals technology's damaging effect on mental illness and suicide rates—and offers a way out. Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is at the forefront of psychologists sounding the alarm about the impact of excessive technology on younger brains. In Glow Kids, he described what screen time does to children, calling it “digital heroin”. Now, in Digital Madness, Dr. Kardaras turns his attention to our teens and young adults and looks at the mental health impact of tech addiction and corrosive social media. In Digital Madness, Dr. Kardaras answers the question of why young people’s mental health is deteriorating as we become a more technologically advanced society. While enthralled with shiny devices and immersed in Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat, our young people are struggling with record rates of depression, loneliness, anxiety, overdoses and suicide. What’s driving this mental health epidemic? Our immersion in toxic social media has created polarizing extremes of emotion and addictive dependency, while also acting as a toxic "digital social contagion”, spreading a variety of psychiatric disorders. The algorithm-fueled polarity of social media also shapes the brain's architecture into inherently pathological and reactive "black and white" thinking—toxic for politics and society, but also symptomatic of several mental disorders. Digital Madness also examines how the profit-driven titans of Big Tech have created our unhealthy tech-dependent lifestyle: sedentary, screen-staring, addicted, depressed, isolated and empty—all in the pursuit of increased engagement, data mining and monetization. But there is a solution. Dr. Kardaras offers a path out of our crisis, using examples from classical philosophy that encourage resilience, critical thinking and the pursuit of sanity-sustaining purpose in people’s lives. Digital Madness is a crucial book for parents, educators, therapists, public health professionals, and policymakers who are searching for ways to restore our young people’s mental and physical health.

"From the author of the provocative and influential Glow Kids: Revolutionary research that reveals technology's damaging effect on mental illness and suicide rates--and offers a way out. Dr. Nicholas Kardaras is at the forefront of researchers sounding the alarm about the impact of excessive technology on younger brains. In Glow Kids, he described what screen time does to children, calling it "digital heroin". Now, in Digital Madness, Dr. Kardaras turns his attention to our teens and young adults. For them, the digital world is a bubble of content you're meant to "like" or "dislike." Two choices might be considered easy, but just how detrimental is this binary thinking to mental health? From body image to politics to personal relationships to decisions, the world doesn't exist in an "up or down," "black or white," "good or bad" dynamic, and social media shouldn't either. Digital Madness explores how technology promotes sedentary isolation, polarization, rewards extremes on both sides, and has spawned a mental health and suicide pandemic from which enormous corporations profit. Dr. Kardaras offers a path out of our crisis, using examples from classical philosophy that encourage resilience, critical thinking, concentration, and other beneficial habits of mind. Digital Madness is a crucial book for parents, educators, therapists, public health professionals, and policymakers who are searching for ways to restore our young people's mental and physical health"--

An educator and leadership coach teaches parents how to cut through daughters’ addiction to social media and reclaim family connection. In today’s age of social media, young girls are learning crucial life lessons from dubious mentors like the Kardashians and other Instagram “celebrities.” Many are so thoroughly addicted to social media they are uncomfortable communicating face to face. It’s no wonder parents across the country are afraid for their daughters’ self-esteem and ability to thrive in the real world. In Girls Just Want to Have Likes, educator and leadership coach Laurie Wolk offers smart advice on how parents can take control, communicate meaningfully with their children, and get back to raising confident capable young women. Laurie shows parents how to reclaim their roles as mentor and guide, helping their daughters unwind and decode the toxic messages social media broadcasts. By applying Laurie’s methods, social media will start to fade into the background of your household, allowing family connection to take center stage—and letting your daughter shine.

Social media is here to stay, and Logged In and Stressed Out presents the right information and tools to improve our lives through examining and changing our digital habits. America is facing a mental health crisis. Studies show that the average American is spending more than 10 hours a day in front of their screens, suicide rates are at an all-time high, and mental health professionals are working hard to address social media’s role in this epidemic. Social media can sometimes feel like an unpredictable roller coaster ride. One’s mood can swing from elated after getting a slew of “likes” on a post to worthlessness and deflation in response to being criticized in a comment thread. Too often, bad feelings from social media interactions linger, negatively affecting our off-line lives and worsening already present mental health issues. Instead of demonizing social media by taking a one-note, “digital detox” approach, Logged In and Stressed Out recognizes social media is not, itself, the problem--it’s how we use it that needs examining. Paula Durlofsky guides readers through its impact on break-ups and infidelities, social distortion and comparison, trauma and triggers, social media binging, depression, anxiety, and other common concerns, using real stories from her own practice to personalize concepts and recommendations. By setting needed limits and embracing new practices, it is possible to improve mental health when using social media. Durlofsky details the whys and hows of creating a safe digital space, cultivating digital and social media mindfulness, applying the techniques of metalizing while consuming social media, and decreasing social media and digital reactivity. She offers suggestions for how to use social media and digital technology to create meaningful social interactions and positive mental health and provides readers with practical steps to put these ideas into action. Social media is here to stay, and Logged In and Stressed Out presents the right information and tools to improve our lives through examining and changing our digital habits.

We’ve all seen them: kids hypnotically staring at glowing screens in restaurants, in playgrounds and in friends' houses—and the numbers are growing. Like a virtual scourge, the illuminated glowing faces—the Glow Kids—are multiplying. But at what cost? Is this just a harmless indulgence or fad like some sort of digital hula-hoop? Some say that glowing screens might even be good for kids—a form of interactive educational tool. Don’t believe it. In Glow Kids, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras will examine how technology—more specifically, age-inappropriate screen tech, with all of its glowing ubiquity—has profoundly affected the brains of an entire generation. Brain imaging research is showing that stimulating glowing screens are as dopaminergic (dopamine activating) to the brain’s pleasure center as sex. And a growing mountain of clinical research correlates screen tech with disorders like ADHD, addiction, anxiety, depression, increased aggression, and even psychosis. Most shocking of all, recent brain imaging studies conclusively show that excessive screen exposure can neurologically damage a young person’s developing brain in the same way that cocaine addiction can. Kardaras will dive into the sociological, psychological, cultural, and economic factors involved in the global tech epidemic with one major goal: to explore the effect all of our wonderful shiny new technology is having on kids. Glow Kids also includes an opt-out letter and a "quiz" for parents in the back of the book.

Society in Focus: An Introduction to Sociology, Ninth Edition, is intended for the introduction to sociology course taught at the freshman/sophomore level.