Final Post: Social Media vs. My Mental Health

 

    Is technology providing me with valuable information or could it be misleading- taking me down a number of thought paths I would not have typically taken? Am I spending too much time on my technology or is this just the way the world works now? Is it possible that social media could be triggering loneliness or even depression and in this sense, is my relationship with technology unhealthy? If you asked me these questions a few months ago, my answer would have been quite simple: No. I was the kind of person who was on my phone all the time. Really any time I wasn’t completely invested in another activity, my phone had my attention. I got so good at multitasking with my technology, that I could be entirely involved in a conversation happening right in front of me and yet at the same time, be able to process every single post on my feed without the slightest bit of hard work. For a very long time, I didn't see this as a bad thing. The media outlets I was using were bringing me laughter, knowledge, and an escape from my reality… I saw those 60 second tik toks videos as a source of serotonin and information, as I truly gained a great deal of knowledge in a funny way every time I opened up the app. While I used twitter and instagram much less, it worked the same way for me. The influx of information and ideas casually being debated, debunked, and disseminated created a true marketplace of ideas and it was captivating. While everyone around me could easily see that I was spending far too much time in the online world, I couldn’t have agreed less. I mean, I was gaining insight and joy, laughing and learning… What's wrong with that?! What I didn't know was how much technology, especially social media, was actually taking in return. 

I have lived with the ups and downs of anxiety and depression for as long as I can remember. While I have a number of healthy coping mechanisms in my tool kit, the easiest and quickest fix for me is merely distraction. As you can probably imagine, social media aided with this significantly. I went through a very low period with my mental health last semester and have been trying to catch up ever since. Of course, when I attempt to tackle the course load of consequences I now reap, I am overcome with anxiety and instead of “fighting” or “flighting”, I freeze. It’s difficult for me to process the world in front of me, my current reality, when the inside of my head is basically that clip from Spongebob where he is running around the library setting accidental fires and screaming at the chaos…. In this sense, grabbing my phone to watch a few 60 second videos of people engaging in entertaining activities became my way of getting through the day. This worked for a long time, until I began to realize that I would come away from my phone hours later having achieved nothing that I needed to and feeling ten times worse about myself than prior. While I didn’t grasp just yet the true impact my social media usage was having on my mental health, I did recognize that social media was taking too much of my time and I deleted everything. 

Since deleting a number of my apps that were used solely as distraction methods, I not only accomplish more during the day but I feel like a real person again. I think that there is a very high likelihood that while social media was diverting my attention from the ruminating thoughts in my brain, it was also causing my anxiety and depression to get worse. Let me rephrase that, I was making my mental health worse by the way I was engaging with the technology available to me. Not only was it pulling me into an online world that did not truly exist and taking me out of reality, but I was constantly seeing people who appeared to have gotten a better hand of cards in the game of life. While on the surface I was happy for these individuals, I couldn’t help but compare myself. I was given an influx of content containing people who always looked happier, prettier, etc. No matter how hard I tried not to compare myself to them, I almost feel it was a sort of subconscious processing in the back of my mind that had a ripple effect on my life. Instead of being grateful for the abundance of blessings I have received, I was looking closer than ever at the deficits in my life- putting much more weight on my instances of failure than my successes. 

I do not think technology or even social media is inherently a bad thing for society. In fact, I think it's incredible how much we have developed in just the last decade. Social media is a great tool for broadening one’s horizons, showing us places and perspectives we would have never gotten the opportunity to know otherwise, and of course, connection to loved ones, friends, and family. It’s truly about the way we engage with what's available to us that determines how it will affect us. In an article published by The Atlantic, researcher Moira Burke of the Human-Computer Institute at Carnegie Mellon explains that while there is clearly a correlation between social media usage and depression/loneliness rates as observed in many different studies, correlation does not mean causation. She goes on to clarify that when people read about lives that are “much better than theirs” (I put this in quotes because we have to keep in mind that what is portrayed on social media is not reality and what seems like a perfect life is often far from it), then two things can occur: “They can feel worse about themselves or they can feel motivated” (Mache, 2020). In this way, social media only becomes unhealthy in the way we process the information provided to us and then act on it. In the same article, John Cacioppo- director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago- demonstrates this point. He describes how loneliness is truly an epidemic affecting our ability to function on both a mental and physical level and that the “greater the proportion of face-to-face interactions, the less lonely you are”. However, much like Burke, Cacioppo agrees that social media cannot cause this loneliness to manifest but rather the way we use social media. If I were to use twitter as a means of connecting to other individuals with similar interests and a means of planning to meet face-to-face, then I am using the app for what it was intended and in a healthy manner. However, if I decide to jump on twitter or tiktok instead of going out to meet up with said connections, then the interaction between me and my app is no longer healthy. 

Technology is a fast growing industry that does not appear to have a stopping point anywhere in the near future. With this comes the development of media outlets that could very well take over. I mean, look at TikTok. In only a year, the new platform has completely shifted our attention spans, expectations of reality, and changed the social media world permanently. As enticing as all of these platforms are and the true honest benefits of being connected on them, breaks and a conscious awareness of the content we are taking in as well as the content we are putting out is necessary to surviving the digital age. Only after taking myself out of the bubble, did I realize just how much I no longer wanted to be inside it. We know the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, however I do think I could make a strong case that the grass is greener- and much healthier- on the other side of this one.

Marche, Stephen. “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 Jan. 2020, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/.