Shackled to Social Media?

Most of us know that we shouldn’t be eating five bars of chocolate or drinking dangerous amounts of alcohol a day. Even when we are placing financial bets, buying alcohol or food, we are constantly warned about the dangers of excessive use. But! what about social media? Should we be concerned about how much we use it? Soon as we are bored we often go on to Facebook to see what everyone else is doing. Sometime we feel the need to check if something has happened or check if anyone has updated something interesting. Facebook has over 1.63 billion users, some studies show that the average user spends 2 hours on social media a day, that is the equivalent to 1 entire month per year.

So why do we do this?

So much of our social lives have now taken place on social media that we have developed a ‘Fear Of Missing Out” in conversation, creating events and starting a career. In fact, a third of employers now use social media as part of their recruitment process, and 80% of 18–24 year olds use social media to find work. So before we know it, we are spending hours on there.

What is this doing to our mental health?

In 2012, Anxiety UK conducted a survey on social media use and its effects on emotions. The survey discovered that 53% of participants said social media sites had changed their behaviour, while 51% of these said the change had been negative. People are seeking validation all the time online, they are trying to get more followers, more likes, so it raises the question where do we draw the line?

What is normal and what is not normal?

Social media companies work very hard to make sure we stay on their platforms. They depend on advertisement revenue, which means the more time users spend on their sites, the more money they make. But if this can be harmful to our mental health and difficult to recognise, there’s going to be some conflict of interest between the users and the platforms. Social media can be fantastic but if we have no idea of the potential downside of how to use it we could leave ourselves open to problems. Do you know the lines that you are potentially crossing when using social media?