Social media and mental health
This article was first published as a guest blog on the website of the Safety Net, a medical awareness, training and education initiative founded by Dr. Vijayshree Patil, who is a Mumbai-based anesthesiologist and life support trainer. It has been slightly edited for republication in this format.
We live in a world that rewards people that work too hard and burn out, that encourages overachieving at the price of mental health and too often advocates narcissism and an unbalanced lifestyle. Social media accentuates this effect, by nudging us to share only our positive experiences in life. As many people are now beginning to realize, our virtual personas are merely a highlight reel of what is essentially a messy, difficult existence. If one keeps comparing the outer projections of people’s lives to one’s internal self, the gap is bound to appear vast. “Why is it that I am not as (rich/beautiful/fit/ successful/hardworking/etc.) as someone else?” is a common refrain that our mind internalizes from the constant comparison elicited by living out our lives online.
Research is showing that the ill effects of social media are not side effects but built-in features
Research is increasingly demonstrating that these effects of social media are not unintentional but hardwired into the design of these apps. Essentially, social media platforms benefit from maximizing the amount of time you spend on them. To do so, they rely on hacking the psyche to provide it short-lived hits of dopamine i.e. the feel-good chemical in the brain. Notifications, likes and hearts are examples of such feel-good mechanisms that keep calling our attention back to our devices. This makes us addicted to the highs they provide, but the high fades quickly and we need to keep going back for more.
The law of diminishing returns then kicks in: as our brain gets used to a certain level of approval and validation, we crave more and more to reach the same level of satisfaction. A newbie instagrammer will be happy with 10 likes from people they know, but once 100 likes become a regular occurrence the brain will crave 1000 and so on and so forth. This creates a dangerously addictive loop. Soon social media becomes like a drug, we latch onto it for relief from our anxiety, but as we do our anxiety keeps going up instead of decreasing.
Our responses to this knowledge may be well-intentioned but are ultimately misguided
Awareness that social media can be detrimental to mental health is increasing. However, our responses to this are limited at best. A number of celebrities now post #nomakeup or #nofilter posts to show what they really look like and we see increasing acceptance of people who do not fit a certain body/skin colour/race/gender type. Yet, no matter how #real one tries to be online, the performative aspect of social media never quite disappears from the equation. Even #nomakeup looks can be #flawless when they come from a celebrity, setting an unreasonably high standard for the rest of us. No amount of likes, shares, impassioned comments or brave disclosures online can replace difficult conversations that need to be had with somebody who suffers from depression or anxiety offline. When devices mediate interactions between people, the false idea of connection they create isolates us even further from each other.
Which brings me to the current over-emphasis on positivity. The rates of depression and anxiety in the populace are the highest they’ve ever been, and “think positive, hustle harder” slogans are appearing all over the internet as a response. However, positivity is not a switch you can turn on, especially if you suffer from depression. I have found that for me personally, the best way to reframe my perspective is by acknowledging my negative filter. So instead of saying “This interview is going to be great and I’m going to be awesome”, which sounds absurd and untrue when depressed, it is more effective to say something like “Yes I am feeling nervous and this is going to be challenging, but I have it in me to overcome any hurdles that come my way, and if it doesn’t go well I have it in me to keep going too.”
Self-care is another buzzword doing the rounds lately. The key element of self-care is awareness: this means actively doing something that you know will make you feel more balanced and centred. Scheduling some time for one such mindful activity every day is like refuelling the mind and giving it the reserves to cope with life stressors. Too often, self-care is misinterpreted and used to further indulge and feed our narcissistic tendencies. The road to true positivity, self-care and self-acceptance is long and hard; it cannot be encapsulated in hashtags or trends.
The benefits of social media detoxes and disconnection
Monitoring social media use is key for maintaining our mental health. Life — however difficult it can be at times — is lived in the real world. This means taking time off to focus on building your skills, spending time with friends, family and pets offline, facing the discomfort of talking to a stranger, addressing the conflicts in one’s life without hiding behind a screen, and spending time in nature. In the end, the human experience is the same no matter how uniquely we respond to it: failures and sorrows, anger and despair are as much a part of us as happiness, joy and purpose. When we make room for this full range to emerge as a society and as individuals, without judgment and avoidance, we will break free from the vicious cycle of narcissism that social media traps us in.

Mental health recovery is neither linear nor black-and-white
Finally, accounts of dealing with mental health online too often present recovery as a clear-cut, linear process. As with everything else we see on the internet, this is simply not true. When people try to present my case as someone who is a fighter or survivor, I always correct them. Depression and anxiety are not things that one conquers forever and puts to rest once and for all, they are conditions that one learns to cope with and manage better and better over time. Recovery is messy and often takes months or even years. The key to not losing hope is to not fall for quick fixes and keep putting in the work: one baby step at a time.
