How Social Media Impacts Your Mental Health
Social media has become an integral part of our lives and it seems that we cannot get rid of it. It has allowed us to connect with our loved ones over far distances and made communications easier than ever before.
Well, it may have provided us with numerous opportunities, but its dark side is often overlooked by most of us. We are so constantly exposed to curated images and ideal lifestyles that it has started to have serious effects on our mental health.
We’ll explore some of the many negative effects while also discussing the impact social media can have on one’s self-esteem. I think it’s time to finally acknowledge the dark side of social media and take action to create a more positive online experience.
The “Negative Effects”
1. Anxiety and Depression
It has been widely known, and studied, that social media has caused increased levels of anxiety and depression among its users.
A common reason for this is when people are exposed to idealistic lifestyles, when they look at people who are living, or at least they show that they are, just the perfect lives one can ever wish for, they are sure to have an inferiority complex about their lives.
This makes them feel inadequate and unhappy with their own lives which can lead to a range of negative emotions including anxiety, depression and low self-esteem.
Everybody shows their perfect life on social media, the perfect moments that might come once in a while is all we see from them, and we think that this is how they are spending each day of their life. This is certainly not the case.
Everybody has good and bad days in life and social media should be the last place for you to judge someone’s lifestyle.
2. Lower Self-Esteem and Poor Body Image
Let’s not forget that social media can have a significant on our body image. Using synthetics to look just perfect has become a norm among social media models.
But we don’t consider this point, all we care about is “How does this person have such a clear skin and I can’t have it?”.
The clear skins of these models have so many behind-the-scenes factors that no one talks about. People forget the perfect lighting that is set up to take these photos, they don’t talk about all the different skin-care and beauty products used by these models to look that way. What kind of filters and photo editing techniques are utilized to enhance their appearance?
All they care about is “Why them and not me?”. This ultimately results in people having lower self-esteem and a poor body image of themselves. It’s important to remember that these images don’t always reflect reality and may not be a realistic standard to hold ourselves to.
3. Addiction
Excessive use of social media makes a person to constantly check their phones for new notifications. This creates a sense of dependency on social media.
The notification sounds almost activate some sort of alert mechanism in us that makes us rush to our phones to check what is causing it.
And many times, it might not be because of a notification, people just tend to get addicted to constantly checking their phones even if nothing is on them, resulting in compulsive behavior.
With the release of TikTok, and now, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, things have gotten a lot worse. It’s not even about getting addicted to notifications anymore, opening these apps is like stepping into an endless vortex, where you can easily get lost in an infinite loophole of addictive videos and content.
People watch one short video, then swipe to the next one and this goes on for a while and before they realize it, they’ve spent hours just laying down and scrolling and watching addictive content that may be of no use in their life.
This needs serious attention because addiction of this sort just makes a person more lazy and ruins the motivation to do anything, which can lead to other problems later in life such as anxiety and depression.
Cyberbullying
Another negative effect of social media is facing something called cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying is like bullying in real life but it is done online.
This includes hateful speech, being harassed, abused and even being threatened in some cases.
The anonymity of the internet gives some people the courage and confidence to say stuff that they wouldn’t be able to say otherwise.
Some people can react harshly to this kind of negativity and may get hurt by it which again, can promote insecurities in them, making them feel less confident about themselves.
All in all, social media can be a scary place for some people because there’s always a chance they’ll be bullied or harassed, making them feel really anxious and fearful all the time, which isn’t a good feeling to have, let’s be honest.
The Science Behind These Negative Effects
The negative effects of social media on mental health are not just anecdotal. There are many studies conducted that support the idea that social media can have a major impact on our psychological well-being.
For example, a research in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology found that limiting exposure to social media decreases loneliness and depression.
Even when we’re connected to large groups of people on the internet, our relationship with them isn’t as intimate as it is in real life. We’re able to show our emotions better in real life than we’re on some platform like Facebook or Instagram. Online interactions are often shallow and lack the intimacy of in-person interactions.
According to SocialMediaVictims.org, many studies continue to support the fact that social media use correlates to increased risks of low self-esteem, along with depression, loneliness, and anxiety.
These are just two studies that I’ve mentioned here on the side effects of excessive social media use. I’m not saying social media is downright bad or harmful, but unmonitored and excessive use of it is what arises these problems.
How Can We Tackle This?
Now that we’ve talked about all the negatives of social media and how it can have a serious effect on our psychological system, let’s talk about how can we tackle this issue, how can we use social media for the better and what are the precautions we must keep in mind to be protected from all these side effects.
1. Limit Your Social Media Use
It should be obvious, if you’re on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or any other platform that is doing nothing more than wasting your time, you should get off of it and spend your time somewhere where it can actually benefit you.
Start using social media to your advantage, instead of watching useless reels, start watching stuff that’ll help you in your academics or in your business.
Social media has more content than we can imagine and all we have to do is look for it. It is another thing that we’re exposed to harmful one but it has so much more to offer. It can help us in many fields of our lives.
Make a kind of timetable for yourself and strictly follow it. It should consist of when you can use social media and when you have to focus on the things that actually matter.
2. Take a Break
If you’ve been stressed or overwhelmed and you think that social media may be the cause of it, take a break completely for some time.
It doesn’t have to be long, try one week at the start and monitor yourself from there.
No doubt, it will be difficult in the start, but as the time passes, you’ll come to learn that you can actually survive without your phone.
I’d suggest to go on a Dopamine Detox. It’s a process that one follows to cut off all the harmful sources of dopamine from their life. This may include your phone, social media, games, etc.
It’ll help you be more alive and live in the moment because you won’t have your major source of distraction.
In the meantime, you can try meditating as this helps infinitely in refreshing your mind and taking out all the pointless content that has been filled in it.
After all, taking a break can prove to be a very effective method to take control back of your life if you’ve submitted yourself completely to social media.
3. Consume Positive Content
Once you’ve taken control back over your life, you have to avoid the content that you’ve to avoid at all times. Just depriving yourself of it is not a good idea because your brain will still want to consume some sort of information, this is why feeding good content can be very useful, and social media is also packed with content that can be very beneficial to you.
You can start learning a new skill which you can then master and provide to others as a Freelancer.
Or, you can try to learn about money and how it works, how to earn it, how to store it, etc.
There is so much content available out there, waiting for you to consume it so that you can rise to levels you wouldn’t have even thought of in your life.
Final Thoughts
In the end, I would say that social media is not a downright bad invention, it has provided us with numerous opportunities such as communication has become easier than ever before, news can be spread at a much faster rate now, everybody has gotten a voice, etc.
But with its benefits, it also has its own side effects and negative. It doesn’t only benefit us, rather, using it excessively can cause serious issues to our mental and, in some cases, physical health.
How we use it is up to us. We can consume useless content to waste our time further and gain no improvement, or, we can utilize it in our best interest and rise to newer heights.
Do any questions pop up in your mind? Feel free to drop them in the comments! I’m happy to help out.
