Mental Health and Social Media: Sometimes You NEED A Break.

  

Illustration by James Steinberg

 While social media provides a lot of useful information, connectedness, support, and entertainment, social media is also a leading cause of depression in many of our youth and adults. Facebook and other social media sites are the only form of communication, expression, and self discovery for some individuals. Ourselves as online users can either experience this in a positive and/or negative aspect in our online usage. 

    To start off, social media can bring us social connection, positive content, access to social support amongst our peers, a community of shared interests, and resources to any of our needs. On a discussion of social media and mental health, (Weinstein, Kleiman, E. M., Franz, P. J., Joyce, V. W., Nash, C. C., Buonopane, R., & Nock, M. K. (2021)) has made a great example that there are online resources like apps for anxiety, meditation music, self help podcasts, and online counselors that are at the reach of our fingertips. We as online users, use social media as a coping mechanism whether we want to share how delicious our burrito was, or to express how we sat through an hour of horrible traffic, or even to share how much we miss someone. We do this to relate and connect with the people online. Here we have a sense of community. 


    Where things can take the wrong turn, begins with a number of factors. This can include social media addiction, stress related to metrics, triggering content, cyber bullying, social and self comparisons, and burdens related to relationship expectations. With the study “Positive and negative uses of social media among adolescents hospitalized for suicidal behavior”, I related a lot to this personally and with people I am connected with who suffer through mental illness. 


    Some of the young adults that were a part of this study expressed how when they are in thoughts of depression, they will self isolate online and go through hours of scrolling, or gaming. Not only does this begin to develop issues with self regulating and addiction, other problems do arise.

Getty Images: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/photographer?photographer=Igor%20Stevanovic%20%2F%20500px



    We are under no surprise that Instagram and Facebook will recommend products that we just so happened to be mentioning 25 minutes ago directly on our feed. Unfortunately, this same thing is happening amongst individuals (young adults aged around 16 years old during the time of this study) that self harming, pro-anorexia, and graphic images are being recommended by these apps based off of their algorithms with sayings like “because you liked this”, or “recommended for you”, or “because you follow ___, here are some recommendations”. You can see where this could easily become a triggering experience to someone who is facing mental health issues especially if the algorithm can pick up on your habits and recommend them to you again when you are on a couch-locked scrolling spiral. 


    So now we have these unintentional aspects, people are also intentionally harming their mental health by self comparison. Females especially, are held up to high beauty standards. We have been told what we should be “looking like” from a young age. We have all these issues going on with body image, face alteration filters, and overall happiness being portrayed online when a lot of us resent others for a single post. Crazy right? We have been moved to seeking value through metrics (likes, follows, shares, etc.) considering that these numbers have a substantial meaning to people in a sense of social acceptance. Now these numbers can boost one's self-esteem just as quickly as it can make someone feel merit less. 


    Without a doubt social media can be a tool, but this tool also can have a double side and may cause some serious detrimental effects to individuals. We should all be aware that the internet is a new thing, and hopefully we can set better policies to age limits and the type of content that is being exposed to us. In the meantime, more people need to set boundaries with themselves and discover in what context their social media usage may be harming their mental health.


Resources:


Weinstein, Kleiman, E. M., Franz, P. J., Joyce, V. W., Nash, C. C., Buonopane, R., & Nock, M. K. (2021). Corrigendum to “Positive and negative uses of social media among adolescents hospitalized for suicidal behavior” [Journal of Adolescence 87 (2021) 63–73]. Journal of Adolescence (London, England.), 89(1), 113–113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2021.04.007


Gerrard, Ysabel. “When Algorithms Think You Want to Die.” Wired, Conde Nast, 21 Feb. 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/when-algorithms-think-you-want-to-die/. 

Top Picture: 

O'Donnell, Erin. “Social Media Use and Adult Depression.” Harvard Magazine, 10 Mar. 2022, https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2022/03/right-now-social-media-adult-depression. 

Bottom Picture: 

500px, Igor Stevanovic /. “Misinformation Infodemic Delusion Concept, Man with Mental Health...” Getty Images, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/man-lying-on-floor-in-a-room-covered-in-newspapers-royalty-free-image/1317453595?adppopup=true. 



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