Does Your Self-Esteem Actually Suffer From Facebook?
Influence of social networks on our self-esteem.
Even if life is not so bright and smooth as we would like, it’ not difficult to show only what we want others to see on our social media profiles. It’s easy to fake a happy life for Instagram. This view of the “ideal self” can be helpful to our self-esteem in some sense. But it’s not that simple... To figure this out, we will discuss the positive and negative sides of spending time on social networks.
Internet or Music?
Have you ever thought about what is better — start your day by browsing the Internet or listening to music? Psychologists have the answer. They found out that the students who prefer surfing the Internet have better grades than those who prefer to wake up with the help of music. This is not a surprise because while online you can read the news, watch educational videos, read blogs, study for an exam, and so on. On the other hand, with a morning review of Facebook and other social media, the situation is not so clear.
Prince Harry decided to try Instagram and that’s what he said after some time: “Growing up in today’s world, social media is more addictive than drugs and alcohol”. Psychologists comment, that at least people addicted to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram do not require medical intervention as this problem is only psychological.
A study by Hancock and Gonzales showed that occasionally checking your profile and making changes to it influence your self-esteem positively. On the contrary, visiting and viewing other people’s profiles could subconsciously impact in a negative way. Let’s make a simple conclusion from this — it’s worthy to stop comparing yourself with others. Nobody is perfect, but everyone has their unique traits.
A recently conducted research has shown that people who have very few friends in real life and are more closed in expressing their own emotions and thoughts, strive to compensate what they’re missing by focusing on the virtual world. However, social networks are not a “magic pill” for this kind of people because they can still face isolation, abuse, and misunderstanding when interacting with others in day-to-day life.
Spending a lot of time on social networks could be a significant factor in lowering your self-esteem. Then, even if you create a miraculous self-image on social media, showing yourself in the best light, it’s doesn’t guarantee you any benefit or help but rather the opposite.
What can we do?
What should we do in this case? To delete our accounts on Facebook or Instagram once and forever? Not absolutely necessary. I personally can’t imagine myself without checking Facebook from time to time: it helps me to stay in touch with relatives and old friends, to get updates about world news and to have useful chats with my colleagues. Instead of making radical decisions, let’s ask ourselves a few questions:
- With whom do I spend more time -with family and friends in real life or rather on the Internet?
- Will I be able to “survive” without social networks for at least one week?
- Which benefits do I get from using them?
It’s useful to control your time spent online. On Instagram, you can check it easily with a few clicks. Go to your profile, click on the 3 lines on the top for menu, and find “Your activity”. How much time do you spend on Instagram?
Moreover, you can set a maximum time limit, and once reached you get notifications to stop looking at your screen! Muting some of the other notifications is also not a bad idea.
In addition, here are a few time-management applications to help you put a break on your social media marathons.
- Moment — Screen Time Control
It helps find out on which social media you spend most of your time and limit it if needed. Available on iTunes.
- Offtime — Digital disconnection
Not limited to social media only. It can block distracting game notifications or text messages for selected periods of time. Available on Google Play and iTunes.
- AppBlock — Stay Focused
A friendly-user application for temporally disabling annoying or time-wasting applications. Available on Google Play.
If you feel that you need to minimalize your time spent online, try not to start and finish your day in front of the screen.
You will see the difference!
Psychologists also recommend spending at least one day from time to time without checking your social networks. It’s a good sign if you don’t feel discomfort during that.
Social networks, as well as the entire Internet, are a double-edged sword. It has its positive side providing us an unlimited amount of information and entertainment, but also some negative influences such as toxicity on social media. It’s up to us to find the balance and not let it control our lives.
“No man is free who is not master of himself. A man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”
- Epictetus
