Social media has infiltrated every aspect of our lives. For most of us, checking social media is the first and last activity of the day. Social media is a space for passing the time, communicating with family and friends, making new friends, sharing pictures, and even finding love. A Pew Research Center report (2018) stated that Facebook and YouTube are the most dominant sites among adults. 78% of 18-24 year-olds use snap chat and Instagram, with 71% of them visiting the sites multiple times in a day (Pew Research Center, 2018). Facebook membership and average usage keep growing, as seen in the average of 1.59 billion daily users in 2019. The average daily social media usage for all internet users across the globe amounted to 136 minutes per day, and this a clear indication that many people spend hours on social media every day.
The rise in social media use has various implications for humans. Social media reliance and overdependence has adverse effects on mental health. Social media platforms make their users feel unhappy and isolated in the long run. Besides, it is one way that people use to share out their insecurities, leading to lower self-esteem (Lin et al., 2016). Social media use has perfected the use of aesthetics in defining ourselves. While social media is a tool of human connection, many people use it to compare their lives to those of other users. Human beings are building their façade based on the digital sphere as opposed to real-life perceptions. Many articles, in recent years, have explained how these have contributed to the belief that we, as people, might be taking the digital life seriously as opposed to living our true selves. Many try to impress the users on a make-belief narrative, thus losing their sense of self.
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A study by De Choudhory et al. (2016) links social media to depression, sleeping problems, anxiety, and eating disorders. The researchers are linking the increasing suicide rate with the increasing social media use. Users who continuously check social media experience anxiety and envy, and this leads to depression. Social media influencers and users post their fabulous lifestyles and edited pictures while other users struggle to keep up with them. Another study by Lancet Psychiatry found that social media users who check their social media at night are more likely to suffer from mood problems such as neuroticism (Lancet Psychiatry, 2019).
The Lancet study analyzed data from 91,000 middle-aged social media users and found that 6% of the participants with poor sleep hygiene and checking social media late suffered from depression. 11% of the participants with poor sleep hygiene had bipolar, and they scored their level of happiness as 9% lower than the participants with good sleep hygiene. While blaming social media for mental problems is an overs implication, it is undeniable that some of the symptoms of mental illnesses are related to increasing social media usage.
Social media was invented to improve communication, yet social media users report feeling lonely and isolated in real life. Having thousands of social media followers and likes is meaningless when one does not have real friends. Conway & O’ Connor (2016) refers to a study on social media use and social isolation among young adults. The study used a sample of almost 2 million 32-year olds and analyzed their social media usage. The study found out that participants who visited social media platforms at least 58 times per week felt socially isolated in comparison to those who visited social media less than 9 times per week (Conway & O’Connor, 2016). Social media also created the fear of missing out (FOMO), where individuals feel like they are being left out when they see their social media friends out there in a party or traveling, and this makes them more lonely and anxious.
Social media is highly addictive as users are constantly checking their social media pages. Social media is designed to keep the users coming back as they feel that they are missing out on the latest post, picture, or video. With thousands of social media users posting, social media users can find themselves wasting hours of their days. Spending too much time on social media distracts users from other activities and experiences. Checking social media constantly also has adverse effects on the attention span. Social media has created a generation of individuals who cannot take time to work or study as they are constantly checking their social media accounts.
The effects of social media on mental health among adolescents and young adults are significant because they are at crucial stages of their lives. Social media is immensely popular among young people. Coincidentally, young adults aged 18-25 have the highest prevalence of mental illness at 22.1% compared to adults aged 26-49 and older adults (Livingston et al., 2014). “Facebook depression” among preteens, teens, and young adults is more damaging in comparison to adults. Social media makes kids, and young adults feel inadequate because of the constant updates and pictures of other kids having a good time. Social media sites are not healthy environments for teenagers. Bullying, party lifestyle, and sexual experimentation are rampant online, and this affects their mental and emotional health negatively.
Social media has contributed to various bullying habits. Many assuage their insecurities on digital platforms where they can be anonymous. This has led to multiple mental health issues for the victims. For instance, reports show that social media contributes to anorexia. This is due to victims trying to fit a given body appeal to impress those on social platforms. Social media has become a contributor to depression and anxiety. This is forcing people to consider taking occasional hiatus to feed on more positive energy.
While social media has negative implications of mental health, there is evidence that social media is beneficial too. Online technologies, including social media, are now used to offer emotional support to those in need. Social media is an invaluable platform for individuals with mental health conditions as they can interact with people going through the same condition any time while maintaining anonymity. There are many individuals using social media to spread positive messages on body positivity, inclusivity, anti-bullying, and mental health. Such individuals are shaping online conversations positively while encouraging social media users to be mindful of the adverse effects of social media.
In conclusion, as social media use continues to grow, users have to be mindful of the effects of social media on their mental health. Social media experts agree that social media is neither wholly good nor wholly bad for mental health, but the impact on our mental health depends on many factors, including how it is used. Most social media users should practice discipline when using social media. They should desist from checking their social media after every five minutes by turning off notifications or wifi. Social media users should take time off from social media to focus on other things, such as hanging out with family and friends without disruption or other hobbies. Social media is useful, but it becomes detrimental to our social, emotional, and mental health when we spend most of our time on social media.
References
Conway, M., & O’Connor, D. (2016). Social media, big data, and mental health: current advances and ethical implications. Current opinion in psychology , 9 , 77-82.
De Choudhury, M., Kiciman, E., Dredze, M., Coppersmith, G., & Kumar, M. (2016, May). Discovering shifts to suicidal ideation from mental health content in social media. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2098-2110). ACM.
Lin, L. Y., Sidani, J. E., Shensa, A., Radovic, A., Miller, E., Colditz, J. B. & Primack, B. A. (2016). Association between social media use and depression among US young adults. Depression and anxiety , 33 (4), 323-331.
Livingston, J. D., Cianfrone, M., Korf-Uzan, K., & Coniglio, C. (2014). Another time point, a different story: one year effects of a social media intervention on the attitudes of young people towards mental health issues. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology , 49 (6), 985-990.
Pew Research Center. (2018, Mar. 1). Social Media Use in 2018. Retrieved from: https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/
The Lancet. (2019). Social media, screen time, and young people's mental health. Lancet (London, England) , 393 (10172), 611.
