Facebook’s Mental Health Problem

The most important thing I learned in 2015? That depression and social media do not go well together at all.

The first time I deleted the Facebook app from my phone was in October 2014. It wasn’t a considered decision. Rather, it felt like dumping a half-eaten tub of ice cream before I could gobble down the whole thing and feel sick, or deleting the number of a man who clearly doesn’t have my best interests at heart: a panicked intervention by reason to prevent my out-of-control animal instinct from doing further harm to myself.

That October I suffered my first bout of depression in over 10 years. Once I realised what was going (it took me a while), I swiftly pulled out of all work projects and withdrew to the care of very close friends and the quiet safety of my home. I tried to read books and failed; I tried to watch films and couldn’t focus for more than a few minutes at a time. My attention span, never a soldier, had shrivelled up. So I found myself clutching my phone and switching between the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter apps for hours at a time. Not to post — I couldn’t think of anything — but to consume. Yet with every double-tap on the home button, with every pull-to-refresh motion, things got worse.

Every receding wave left a despair more…