- June 9, 2019
- Posted by: Amit Rawat
- Category: Psychology
Social media is a boon and a bane at the same time. It has made our lives simple. Communicating with someone or expressing our views was never this easy.
However, Social media has also contributed to our stress, anxiety, depression and other serious mental health issues.
Four common stressors on social media
Highlight reel
Just like in sports, the highlight reel is the collection of best and brightest moments of our lives. Social media is our personal highlight reel. That is where we put our best pictures like our pool party pictures, wedding photos, birthday celebrations and other significant moments with our friends and family.
“We struggle with insecurity because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”
Steven Furtick
Pastor, Best-Selling Author and Speaker, North Carolina
But then it comes with a price. We constantly compare our highlight reel with somebody else’s highlight reel. Yes, it was happening previously when there was no social media but now it is happening all the time.
Example
We see a face-book post like the one mentioned above, we immediately start comparing ourselves with our friends. Why am I sitting at home and why I am not going to a vacation like my friend?
Social Currency
Just like the dollar, a currency is used to literally add a value to some product or service. In social media, the likes, the shares, the comments have become this form of social currency by which we attribute value to something.
In marketing, it is called the ‘Economy of attention’. Everything is competing for your attention and when we give something or someone a Like or a piece of finite attention, it becomes a recorded transaction attributing value to something or someone.
In social media, the problem is that we are the products and we are letting other people to attribute value to us which is actually quite dangerous. That means ‘how we feel’ is completely dependent on others and not us.
We are tying our self worth with what others think about us. We are obsessed and we want take that group picture or a selfie just right otherwise we are not worthy enough or our value would decrease. We are so obsessed that we also wait for perfect time to post out pictures and if we are not doing it then we feel we are missing out on something which brings me to another stressor on social media.
Fear of Missing Out(F.O.M.O)
It is an actual social anxiety that you are missing out on an actual connection, event or opportunity.
A collection of Canadian universities made a research and found out that –
“7/10 students would get rid of their social networking accounts were it not for fear of being left ‘out of the loop’.”
Even, you must have thought about deactivating your social media account but you can’t and that is majorly because of this F.O.M.O.
Apart from creating stress, anxiety and depression among its users, social media also imparts threat to your security online and that brings us to another online stressor.
Online Harassment
“40 percent of online adults have experienced online harassment, one way or the other”
“73 percent have witnessed online harassment”
And 100 percent of the time, it is worst if you are women, LGBTQ, a person of colour……..
We see many cases of online harassment and some are extreme cases like someone committing suicide because the person’s private posts are online.
Apart from the extreme cases, there is a day to day harassment which is not even considered harassment. Like a mean comment on your profile picture, an abuse or even a taunt.
What if your friend sharing your ugly picture online and making fun while you are feeling terrible?
These micro incidents together make up a macro incident which is not good for our mental health. Social media is harming our mental health without us knowing about it.
Addiction
This addiction of social media which is harming our mental health seems inevitable these days. We are constantly checking our notifications, messages, likes, comments, shares and even if there is nothing showing up, we are constantly anxious and check our phones every minute.
The need to check your mobile phone and your social media is actually becoming your addiction which is more dangerous than substance addiction. In case of substance addiction, the people actually know that they are the addicts. But in case of social media addiction people are completely unaware of their social media addiction which is harming their mental health.
When we want to feel good, we want our dopamine level to rise and to get a social currency, we immediately turn to social media. We are not happy with our lives but then we want to be happy virtually and that prompts us to check our social media
This addiction is slowly making us vulnerable and mentally unhealthy.
Sounds like drugs, right?
The Canadian association of mental health found out –
“7-12 people who spent over 2 h/day on social media reported higher depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts.”
We need to understand that social media is inevitable and it is difficult to get rid of it completely.
“Abstinence is not an option, but you can practice ‘safe social media’.”
In reality, Social media is neither good nor bad. However, it is the most recent tools to do what we have always done. That is socialising, connecting and communicating with others. But the problem is that we are letting it control our lives rather than us controlling the social media to make our lives better.
We need-
Preventive strategies
Coping strategies
Above strategies just to make sure that when you have your low days and questioning your self-worth, you can fight with it a lot better.
Final words
You need to recognize that social media is creating problems in our lives and our mental health is suffering because of that. If it has become an addiction lately and you are feeling as if you are not well then you can talk about it. You can even talk to the experts if you feel that you are suffering from anxiety, depression or any other serious mental health issues.
