Social Media, Stress, and Mental Health
I think that some of the biggest mental health challenges facing university students today are: stress, anxiety and depression, with the biggest one being stress. University students have to juggle many different aspects of life. Many students are simultaneously balancing several things at once which can get overwhelming really quickly because this stage in their life is very delicate. This is exacerbated if the student has moved away from home, is in a new place, and is away from their friends and family. These people know them best, and are able to immediately sense if something has gone amiss. They could also help prevent certain mental health issues from getting worse.
Many students going into university are unaware of how complex university student life really is. I think the following diagram accurately depicts what university student life is like (expectation vs. reality).
The mental health issue of stress can be caused by so many different factors, and is definitely influenced and impacted by a large variety of factors as well. Therefore, I think that social media’s affect on students’ mental health is relatively minor. However, I still think that social media contributes to this problem because of its deeply permeated nature in students and young people in general. Many students today are using Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. There is FOMO (fear of missing out), as well as issues concerning the tendency for people to negatively compare their social media post/accounts and by extension, their lives. With respect to FOMO, students may see one of their peers post something really interesting and think about how they were not invited or why they can’t participate in the conversation about a certain topic. This adds more psychological stress because it affects how someone sees their social life. In addition, since social media is often times the “highlight reel” of someone’s life, it makes it very difficult for one to get a true sense of that person’s life. This can lead to unhealthy, negative comparisons, especially when comparing one’s own “highlight reel” with other people who are constantly posting cool and interesting things, whether it is your friends, your peers, or even online influencers and celebrities. With social media, it is easy to make that comparison, even though you might come from totally different circumstances.
In conclusion, I think that while social media does contribute to students’ feelings of stress, anxiety and depression, the magnitude of the impact is relatively minor compared with other factors such as pressure to do well in school, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, and other personal life problems. However, social media can still contribute to this mental health challenge by creating environments that are less than beneficial to students and helping create psychological stress. Social media can really affect ones sense of self, sense of worth, as well as identity. These are all stressors for university students during this stage of their lives, as they are trying to figure out who they are amid balancing school, work, and life.
