iGen User (over) Attachment to Social Media: Reframing the Policy Intervention Conversation

Attachment to social media is a serious problem for iGen users. A recent study of social media use by 10,000 iGen users found 36% were on social media for 2 to 4 h daily, and 11% for more than 5 h. Further, users who reported spending more time on social media were significantly more likely to rate their mental health as poor. With the increasing awareness of the dire consequences of addiction to social media, calls have been made to take action against its continued proliferation. Instead of bans on social media, we call for mild policy-based interventions to guide appropriate positive social media use, while minimizing harmful experiences. Attachment Theory is adopted to understand the individual values and feelings of attachment of iGen to social media. We then use the Value-focused Thinking process to organize values to define iGen’s attachment objectives. In a final synthesis we present a mild policy-based interventions approach to suggest policy interventions and techniques for social media use to combat over-attachment by iGen users.