Frontman of American metal band Slipknot, Corey Taylor, has opened up about his addiction to social media in a recent interview.
Taylor says that the rush of instant gratification from social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram fed into a cycle that saw him neglecting almost every other area of his life.
The singer, who also fronts the band Stone Sour, says the only time he wasn’t on some sort of social media was when he was with his children but even then he felt strong urges to check his accounts.
Taylor has been open about his struggles with depression and alcohol abuse in the past and revealed that he is working on a new book in an interview on the Let There Be Talk podcast from Loudwire.
He said: “There’s a flare in addiction right now and it’s one of the things I’m working on in my new book. There’s a correlation between that and social media — all of the shit that’s been triggered because of social media, the same kind of dopamine trigger. It’s compulsion, gratification, compulsion, gratification. It’s just a constant cycle.
“I was [addicted to social media]. I had just gotten separated and I kind of went down a crazy wormhole, because I was really depressed, I was really fucking unhappy. I had just been through hell. Before, you’re a single guy, you go out, you play the scene, you do whatever. Now, you’ve got all this crazy shit at your fingertips. For an addict, it was fucking nuts.”
Taylor says that if he could go cold turkey on social media he would but like many in the entertainment industry the platforms are essential to promoting his work. The singer, author and actor was able to successfully scale back their use though.
He added: “Instagram, Twitter… it took me a while to get out of it. For about three months solid, that’s all I did, ignoring my fucking duties and shit.
The only time I would really fucking get away from it was when I was with my kids. Then the compulsion would come right back and I was like, ‘What is going on?’ It took me so long to settle that compulsion down … If I could get rid of it all, period, I would.”
Slipknot will release their sixth studio album in 2019 having already dropped the first single ‘All Out Life’ on 31 October 2018.
