Like any drug, we know social media is not good for us but we keep going back to it. We are practically living on smartphones.
The device is always at hand, and in hand much of the time. Walking, working, eating, even watching television, we can not resist scrolling through messages and posts coming in.
One social media company reckons to total time we spend on the phone amounts to nearly two hours a day for 74 per cent of us, which is somewhat less than the average two hours and 48 minutes daily we spend watching television.
Two hours does not seem too much for social media but it is the frequency that presents the problem. If we sat down and devoted two hours a day to catching up with friends, news and the other interests in our lives on social media, there would be nothing to worry about.
But few of us do that. We feel the need to check in at any time of the day. It is a habit and it is hard to shake.