How is social media affecting mental health?

How is social media affecting mental health?

by Nikki Machado, LCSW

#issocialmediacompromisingyourwellness

You hear your notification sound go off and you can’t focus. You see the red notification button in the upper right-hand corner of your app and experience a strong urge to clear it. You post a photo or a story on your social media page and keep checking back for likes over and over again. You feel as if something is missing when you can’t access your phone. You realize you missed a large part of the story your family member was telling you or the lecture your professor was giving because you were scrolling through Instagram.

Let’s be honest, we have all experienced one or all of these at some point since social media has taken the world by storm. Remember the Merriam-Webster dictionary? That four inch thick book with six-point font covering every page that’s now collecting dust as it sits on your grandmother’s book shelf? If that doesn’t jog your memory, google it! Merriam-Webster defines social media as a form of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content such as videos. Looking at that definition, social media has made its way into every area of our lives. Based on a collection of statistics compiled by Maryam Mohsin for her infographic, 10 Social Media Statistics You Need to Know in 2020, there are 3.5 billion social media users worldwide with Facebook being the most popular platform. Ninety percent of Millennials (those ages 22-37), Seventy-Seven percent of Generation X (those age 38-53) and Forty-Eight percent of Baby Boomers (those ages 54-72) are active social media users. Active social media users spend on average 3 hours per day on social networking and messaging. Worldwide, 500 million daily active Instagram stories are uploaded. Ninety-one percent of all social media users access social channels through a mobile device. There is no doubt that social media is an easily accessible part of our everyday lives and anything we spend this much time on deserves a little critical observation.

We are social creatures by design and are wired for connection. Human-to-human connection helps us to thrive in life and the quality of our connections has a huge impact on our mental health and general sense of well-being. Quality connections help us to ease stress, anxiety, and depression. Quality connections support us in establishing a positive sense of self-worth. Quality connections curb feelings of loneliness and provide opportunities for positive emotional experiences such as joy and comfort. Conversely, lacking quality social connections can pose a serious risk to your mental and emotional health. Today, many of us rely on social media platforms to find and connect with each

other and research is showing that social media is just not a substitute for these quality, human-to-human social interactions. In-person contact with others is a necessity for the biological responses that help us alleviate stress and make us feel happier, healthier, and more positive.

While in some senses, social media brings us closer to people, spending too much time engaging in social media use can actually make us feel lonelier and more isolated and worsen mental health issues such as anxiety and depression. Researcher Bailey Parnell narrows the stressors of social media into four areas that can lead to mental health problems. The first is labeled the Highlight Reel, which she describes as a collection of the best and brightest moments of one’s life. The impact of this stressor is seen when we compare our behind-the-scenes view of our own lives to the highlight reel of everyone else’s. When this happens, which it does many times per day, why wouldn’t we feel dissatisfaction or inadequacy?

The second common stressor comes in the form of what Parnell calls Social Currency—the likes, comments, and shares that we get from our posts which we unknowingly equate to our personal value. When we put in effort to get the perfect selfie or post the most exciting moments of our day and don’t get the social currency, we may be left feeling less than valuable. Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO, is noted as the third most common social media stressor. FOMO is the anchor that keeps us coming back to social media over and over again. How many times have you thought about getting rid of your social media account but haven’t? Perhaps it is the fear of missing out that prevents you from doing so. Lastly, the fourth, and arguably the biggest, common stressor is online harassment. Online harassment can come in a big or small package—both with serious consequences on our mental and emotional health. Social media is riddled with instances of harassment and when the mental and emotional effects of this harassment go unnoticed and untended to, we can come to some really dark moments in our lives.

We can all agree that social media has its place and it isn’t going anywhere, so how do we learn to co-exist? The answer lies in awareness and creating healthy and balanced habits for social media usage. Seriously reflect on your current social media habit and do so daily. Imparting awareness on a daily basis is the first step to finding a good balance. Audit your social media intake. Take a look at what goes into your head and your heart and how it makes you feel. Take inventory of what triggers difficult feelings versus uplifting feelings. What makes you feel better about yourself versus worse about yourself? What makes you feel anxious versus calm and content? Use this information to model good behavior. Modeling good social media habits not only helps us, but can have an impact on those around us as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o

https://www.oberlo.com/blog/author/maryam