Social media & Mental health
“From the statistics alone, it’s clear that social media has become an integral (and to a large extent, unavoidable) part of our lives”
Social Media
Over the last decade, the digital world has exploded into life. The internet has become a major influence in peoples everyday lives, Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snap chat have become the most common way that individuals connect with each other. This can have both positive and negative effects to it, for example family or friends who are living afar it’s now so easy to connect with people who are thousands of miles away. The coronavirus pandemic has also shown how positive social media can be on people’s lives as without it people all over the world would have been stuck in isolation without being able to connect with their friends and family. However while there are positives there are also great negatives, it’s been well documented that social media usage can become quite addictive and can play a major role in affecting peoples moods and mental health depending on its usage.
Social Media Addiction
When the word addiction is used, many people will naturally think of the common factors such as, Gambling, alcohol, cigarettes and drugs. However with the way society is being shaped and the routines of many young people it’s thought that social media addiction is just as common as all of these awful addictions. It is thought that social media addiction affects up to 5% of young people around the world, when you consider how fast social media has grown this is a staggering figure that unfortunately will only increase with time. Both long term and short term addictions can occur with an addiction for social media, certain individuals may without knowing check their certain social media accounts every hour of the day without even realising that this is an issue, while a longer term addiction could be of an individual spending hours of their scrolling through people’s accounts. Apples latest screen time feature on its products can really give a shock to individuals who spend huge proportions of their day on their phones.
It is generally agreed that the link between social media and mental health is down too over usage, if people are constantly on their social media and there isn’t a lot of interaction, then people begin to become insecure about themselves, they begin to feel like they could be unpopular or are not funny as they can see other people having fun on social media and their own account may be relatively quiet. This is what can cause the individual to continually check their accounts hoping that people like their status or their photos. This insecurity connects with things such as anxiety, low morale and depression all of which are heavily linked with social media and mental health.
Fear of missing out
In my opinion this is the biggest link between social media and mental health, as it is the main connection with lower self-esteem and life satisfaction. Many of the popular websites used in social media will promote certain images and lifestyles causing serious mental harm on the people who simply don’t live this lifestyle. In my experiences for every person that is enjoying themselves posting glorified images on social media there are several who are at the other end feeling quite down about their own situation. Glorified images and filtered posts can create an image for the youth in today’s world of how they should look, or how they need to look even if it is totally unrealistic. This evidence is further supported by a recent survey carried out by the Royal Society of Public Health stating that 9 in 10 young females says they are unhappy with how they look, this comes purely from looking at glorified photos of other people.
Conclusion
As Social media has grown the obsession with it has gotten out of control, many people see it as a must or a need when it should be used as a tool to enhance opportunities in life. As mentioned in the report many people are struggling with the toll that over use of social media can play mentally as it is strongly associated with conditions such as anxiety and depression. As a society I feel everybody must come together to change this. The main contributors to social media must think very carefully on what polices can be introduced to manage the impact of social media on mental health. Until this happens I strongly believe that the situation will continue to grow causing a major strain on society.