Nearly a third of the world uses the social media site Facebook, but how are New Zealanders using it?
Celebrities - from Justin Bieber to Lorde - have discovered the pitfalls of Facebook, Instagram and other online platforms. Paul Little explores the hard road to controlling a social media habit.
If your newspaper admitted it had been running stories that weren't true – whether knowingly or not – you'd stop buying it.
So why do we keep following social media such as Facebook, on which the 20 most popular news stories at the end of 2016 were fake ones that did better than the 20 most popular real ones?
If a shop you used to frequent made it almost impossible for you to take your custom elsewhere, you'd probably complain to the likes of the Commerce Commission.
Can you delete all social media apps from your phone? Photo / Herald graphic
Yet many people who try to disengage from Facebook find the process so difficult – which it is intended to be – that they give up and stay logged on.
The fake news and techno ties that bind are just part of the problem. As more research into the phenomena comes online, the cons on the social media pros and cons list get bigger.
They include, but are not limited to: links to mental disorders; poor school performance; information overload causing stress; privacy concerns; online bullying; difficulty sleeping; social anxiety; reduced physical activity and poor concentration.
The research jury is still out on how many of these are genuine grounds for concern and even whether devotion to social media can tip over into something that meets the definition of an addiction.
But for a growing number of people, the risk is one to be taken seriously and social media is increasingly seen as something to be handled with care, if not avoided altogether.
About 50m US users reportedly left Facebook in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Photo / Getty Images
And it's not just individuals who are worried. Public health authorities in Canterbury ran a Digital Detox campaign in 2016 that convinced 5000 people to opt out of social media for a short term.
And in Papua New Guinea the government recently announced that Facebook would be shut down for a month so that the Communications and Information Technology Department could research its use in that country.
And where the problems are real, they have the potential to affect a lot of us.
According to online marketing specialists Adhesion, Facebook is used by 79 per cent of online Kiwis, Instagram by 46 per cent and Twitter by 21 per cent.
The social media king is Cristiano Ronaldo, who has more liked on his Facebook page than any other (122 million), and the second highest amount of followers on Instagram (128m).
Cristiano Ronaldo is the social media king. Photo / AP
Popstar Selena Gomez has the most followers on Instagram with 138m and Beyoncé holds the record for the most liked Instagram post with the announcement of her pregnancy with twins, which garnered almost 11m likes.
A Hootsuite report says 74 per cent of people spend an average of one hour and 53 minutes a day on social media, fast closing in on the average two hours and 48 minutes we spend on all forms of TV.
If nothing else, according to Australian-based social media commentator Mark Pesce, who left Facebook eight years ago, "some people are starting to feel we're a bit out of balance. We won't reject it as a whole but will try to find out where it belongs in the mix of our lives."
Pesce opted out of Facebook mainly on privacy grounds.
"There was research from Harvard showing how you could use a social graph to determine all sorts of things a person would reveal about themselves by looking at people they were connected to on Facebook," he says.
"I realised that was very powerful, and I didn't understand how it would be used, because Facebook was not being clear about it then."
Selena Gomez has 138m followers on Instagram. Photo / Getty Images
And then there was the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The British consulting firm collected data from millions of Facebook users which was allegedly used to attempt to influence voter opinion on behalf of politicians who hired them.
About 50m US users reportedly left Facebook in the wake of the scandal.
Ironically as social media allow people to show more of themselves to the world, people increasingly modify the selves they present: we always want to show our best sides and that may not be the real us.
Technology growth specialist Sian Simpson of Kiwi Landing Pad left social media temporarily a couple of years ago as part of a personal reboot.
"I went through a friend cleanse and decided to get off it completely because I realised they weren't real friends," she says.
She also saw a gap between the way some people were in real life and how they were presenting themselves on social media.
Kristy von Minden, who runs corporate wellness workshops with her company Mind Bright, also took a break and came back with a revised social media philosophy.
"I took two months off after a health issue," says von Minden.
Beyonce's baby announcement was the most liked Instagram post ever. Photo / Instagram
"In order to heal properly I needed to come off social media to connect with nature and people in my life, instead of on a screen so I wasn't comparing my difficulties with other people's highlight reels. That made a huge difference to how I felt."
Von Minden is back on social media but says she has "stringent rituals and strategies in place to keep it under control".
"At night, for example, I put my phone on flight mode from 7pm. We have screen-free Sundays – we only use our phone for phone calls. If we go to the beach I don't take the phone to take photos. We never have phones at the dinner table."
As with smoking, the best way to beat a social media addiction might be never to start.
Unlike the weed, however, social media confer apparently essential personal and professional advantages.
Justin Bieber has a love-hate relationship with social media. Photo / Getty Images
These might make people think twice about forgoing them, but it's not a one-way ticket to Ludditesville, according to teaching student Stacey Anyan, who has a smartphone, knows how to use a computer, does research on the internet, uses email and shops online but has never been on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
"It's partly a time thing," says Anyan.
"I hear a lot of people saying Facebook takes up a lot of time in their day, and I think: I just don't have the time for that."
Anyan admits to a twinge at missing out on some contact with friends around the world.
On the other hand: "I'm a bit mystified at how people are so happy to give away their personal details."
As for people's reaction to her stance: "There are definitely some who say, 'Good on you. Don't bother'. I've not had too many people say, 'You're crazy, you need to get on it'."
How did it come to this? How did 80 per cent of us suddenly find something that didn't exist a few years ago was something we can't live without?
In part, you can put it down to a basic human need to connect with others and be liked – although, hitherto, we didn't need hundreds of people, including strangers, to approve our every random thought or carefully prepared meal.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photo / Getty Images
"All these people in Silicon Valley and San Francisco and LA have been hired to design Instagram and Facebook in a way that appeals to our pleasure and reward centres. They are designed to release dopamine – the same chemical released when people do cocaine, only much less of it. But it's a reward. Notifications and the like make people want to keep going back for more."
Although von Minden uses social media for work, her break has given her an insight into their limits and into what really matters.
"Remember the storm a couple of months ago where all of Auckland lost power? We live in Muriwai and lost our cell reception for a week and it was most relaxed and happy I'd been for years. It made me think what a wonderful era our parents lived in. We were really relaxed and connected."
Just shut your Facebook
Celebrities have a love-hate relationship with social media.
They love being praised and followed, but they hate being criticised.
Consequently some, such as Justin Bieber, treat social media as a revolving door through which they will storm when criticised, returning through it when wanting to feel the love.
Others have deleted or edited their social media accounts for reasons of privacy and decorum, especially when, as in the case of Meghan Markle marrying Prince Harry, she needed to put aspects of her past behind her.
Lindsay Lohan deleted her Twitter and Instagram accounts last year, saying farewell with an Arabic phrase meaning "Peace to You" – which was probably a reasonable summary of what was going on.
Lindsay Lohan deleted her social accounts last year. Photo / Getty Images
Others just can't make up their minds.
Roseanne Barr, whose TV show was cancelled after a racist tweet, said she was leaving Twitter and followed her departure with a stream of tweets in which she attempted to justify herself.
Lorde, with customary unpredictability, has left her 8.22m Twitter followers with just two tweets to contemplate, both posted in November last year.
On her Instagram there are now just three equally obscure posts, one from each of the past three years.
• Deleting all social media apps from your phone so you have to use your clunky old computer
• Turning off notifications on all your social media sites so that you're not constantly being tempted to see what important culinary creation has just been photographed
• Keeping your phone in another room so you have to make an effort to check it
• Buying an alarm clock so your phone isn't the first thing you interact with in your day
• Setting a time limit on your social media involvement – use that alarm clock to tell you when time's up
• Not having your phone in the bedroom. According to a Deloitte study, 61 per cent of us check our phones within five minutes of waking and 74 per cent in the 15 minutes before we go to sleep
