Something Was Making My Decisions for Me: What Social Media and Painkillers Have in Common
I know what it feels like to lose control of your own decisions.
Prescription pain medication started as something I believed I needed. Pain was real. The prescriptions were legal. Doctors wrote them. Pharmacies filled them. I trusted the system because I thought the system was there to protect me.
But over time, the pills stopped being just something I took for pain.
They started making choices for me.
What I would do. Where I would go. What I could handle. What I would give up. The worst part was that I didn’t recognize it right away. Dependence does not always walk into your life screaming. Sometimes it slips in through the front door wearing a prescription label.
I know because I lived it. I ended up unresponsive, fighting to stay alive, and spent three and a half weeks in a coma.
That experience changed the way I look at anything designed to keep a person coming back for more.
I am not saying I was addicted to social media. I wasn’t. My dependence was on prescription medication. But I recognize the pattern when I see it: something is built to exploit a human weakness, then the person is blamed when the machine works exactly as designed.
The loop is not accidental
Social platforms are not passive shelves where content simply sits waiting for you.
They are built to hold your attention.
You open an app for one reason. Maybe you want to answer a message. Maybe you want to check the news. Maybe you have five minutes to kill.
Then the feed keeps going.
No natural stopping point. No final page. No clear signal that you are finished.
That is infinite scroll.
A new video appears. Then another. A post gets a like. A notification lights up. Someone responds to something you wrote. You pull down to refresh, and there may be something rewarding waiting on the other side.
That uncertainty matters.
Sometimes the reward is approval. Sometimes it is outrage. Sometimes it is laughter.
Sometimes it is the feeling that you are not being alone. You keep checking because the next thing might be the thing that makes you feel something.
Likes and comments can become little hits of social approval. Notifications become prompts.
The feed learns what grabs you and keeps serving more of it.
The loop is simple:
Cue: A notification, a quiet moment, boredom, loneliness, or stress.
Action: Open the app and start scrolling.
Reward: A laugh, a like, a surprise, an argument, or a moment of connection.
Repeat: The brain remembers where the reward came from.
That does not mean every person who scrolls is addicted. It does mean the design is not neutral.
I learned the hard way that something can feel helpful, familiar, and normal while slowly taking control of your choices.
What the numbers actually say
The scale is hard to ignore.
By 2024, about 69.7% of Americans had active social media accounts, compared with roughly 5% in 2005. Worldwide, about 4.95 billion people use social media daily, and that number is projected to approach 6 billion by 2027.
The average person spends about 2 hours and 27 minutes a day on social media. The average American spends about 2 hours and 15 minutes.
That is not a small part of life.
About 210 million people worldwide are estimated to be addicted to social media. In the United States, roughly 10% of Americans, about 33 million people, are estimated to be addicted. Those figures, along with the broader numbers on use and harm, are collected in Lanier Law Firm’s Social Media Addiction Statistics guide.
Source: Lanier Law Firm — Social Media Addiction Statistics: https://www.lanierlawfirm.com/social-media-addiction/statistics/
The numbers involving teenagers hit even harder:
Teens spend an average of about 4.8 hours a day on social media, according to Gallup’s 2023 findings.
Teens using social media for three or more hours a day face an increased risk of depression and anxiety. At five to seven hours, that risk roughly doubles.
Instagram has been ranked the most detrimental platform to young people’s mental health by the UK Royal Society for Public Health.
At least one-third of teen girls ages 11 to 15 say they feel “addicted” to certain platforms, according to the 2023 U.S. Surgeon General advisory.
Nearly 95% of teenagers own a smartphone.
A Meta-sponsored study surfaced in 2026 found that children with prior trauma were the most vulnerable to platform addiction, and that parental controls were largely ineffective once dependency took hold.
Social media has even been described as more addictive than alcohol and cigarettes.
I want to be careful with that comparison. These are not identical substances or identical experiences. I know that because I lived through prescription medication dependence, and I know the physical danger that can bring.
But the warning is still worth hearing.
About 40% of U.S. high school students report persistent sadness or hopelessness, and suicide is the second-leading cause of death among people ages 15 to 24.
Those numbers are not an excuse to panic. They are a reason to pay attention.
Who is most vulnerable?
Teenagers are still developing judgment, impulse control, and a sense of identity. Approval matters deeply during those years. Rejection can feel permanent. A cruel comment can follow a child into the bedroom, the classroom, and the middle of the night.
But kids carrying prior trauma may be even more exposed.
A child who already feels unsafe may look online for connection, reassurance, distraction, or control. The platform gives them something immediately. Then it keeps asking for their attention.
That is where the danger grows.
Not because the child is weak.
Because the system has found the wound.
Legal and everywhere does not mean safe
This is the quiet part people do not always want to say out loud.
Something can be legal and everywhere and still hurt you.
Prescription medication was legal. It was common. It came through a medical system I believed I could trust. That did not make the consequences harmless.
The same principle applies here.
I am not telling you to throw your phone into a river. I am not pretending social media is all bad. It can help people find community, information, support, and a voice.
But convenience is not safety.
A pill bottle can sit in a medicine cabinet while dependence grows. A phone can sit beside your bed while your sleep, attention, confidence, and decisions are slowly shaped by something else.
The question is not whether the product is legal.
The question is whether it is still serving you.
What can a person actually do?
I do not believe in lectures. I have heard plenty of them. Most of them made me want to shut down.
I believe in honest steps.
Start with one question: What am I reaching for when I open this?
Are you bored? Lonely? Angry? Avoiding something? Looking for reassurance? Trying not to think?
You do not have to shame yourself for the answer. You just need to tell the truth.
Then try a few practical changes:
Turn off nonessential notifications. Do not let every alert make a decision for you.
Keep the phone out of the bedroom. Start with one night, not a lifetime promise.
Create stopping points. Decide when you are done before you open the app.
Notice what leaves you worse. If an account consistently makes you anxious, angry, or ashamed, remove it.
Talk to your kids without starting with blame. Ask what they are seeing and how it makes them feel.
Replace the habit with something real. Walk. Call somebody. Sit outside. Write down what is happening inside your head.
Get help when control is slipping. You do not have to wait until your life is in pieces.
Small steps count.
I know they do because I had to rebuild my life one piece at a time.
Before something else decides for you
The question I keep coming back to is simple:
What is quietly making my choices for me?
For me, the answer was prescription medication. I ignored warning signs until ignoring them almost killed me.
For someone else, it may be a platform, a habit, a relationship, or a story they keep telling themselves. The name can change. The pattern is still worth facing.
I am not here to condemn anybody. I have been through the wringer. I know what it is like to be embarrassed, frightened, defensive, and desperate to believe everything is fine.
I also know this: noticing the problem is not the same as being defeated by it.
There is still time to step back. There is still time to ask for help. There is still time for a second chance.
I believe that because I was given one.
My memoir, Almost Gone, tells the full story of what happened to me: the pain, the coma, the broken system, the fight to recover, and the faith that carried me forward.
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