Balancing social media for better mental health

Social media platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, have taken over our lives in the past few years. The compulsion to share the little details of our lives has become stronger and is incentivized by the pleasure received from the positive comments and ‘likes’ the posts receive from friends and acquaintances. The increasing use of social media platforms by young users, especially adolescents, has several potential reasons: it could range from peer-pressure to seeking a place of escape from unpleasant household experiences. This article examines these causes of increasing social media addiction and the consequences of this increased use on the mental health of users.

Factors influencing increased social media usage

A major factor driving youngsters to social media addiction, which refers to spending more-than-average time on social media platforms, is the nature of their experiences in the household. A research article that conducted a study on this showed that youngsters who face disciplinarian parents often depend more on social media to avoid facing real problems. Mostly, this is seen when parents ‘shame’ their children as part of reprimanding them for mistakes. Shaming could, for instance, include shouting at the child in public or mocking the child in front of strangers for a mistake that they committed in the past. Such actions distance the child from parents and motivate them to spend more time on virtual spaces, like social media platforms.

Another factor that influences the time youngsters spend online is peer pressure. When all their friends are active on social media platforms and sharing content with each other, it can be easy for an adolescent to feel left out. This pressure can seem intense when they are in school and generate a fear of missing out in them. Even when they are active on social media platforms, this fear will intensify if they are away from their devices for a time, causing severe strain to their mental health. The consequent dependency on gadgets and social media presence affects adolescents’ mental well-being in significant ways.

Dangers associated with social media

Overuse of social media exposes youngsters more to threats such as cyberbullying, trolling, and scams. Identities are distorted on social media. That is, it is difficult to perceive what a person is feeling or trying to express on social media platforms because the transfer of information is all virtual. Not having physical cues, like facial expressions, to guide processing of information makes it easier to feel that everything is anonymous on these spaces. This feeling of anonymity increases cyberbullying.

A person engaging on social media platforms could be shamed for their opinions, physical attributes, or be made to face abusive language. For instance, girls who post photos of themselves often receive sexualized comments and face abuse for the way they look, dress, or pose for the photo. This could have serious effects on a person’s emotional well-being.

When the person facing such abuse is an adolescent, the effects are worse because they, often, do not know how to handle such incidents and fear the shame of their peers finding out about it, if they report the incident. Moreover, the knowledge that content on social media is permanent scares them into silence. Most often, even if sensitive content is taken down, there exist several duplicates of it, especially in the form of screenshots of others’ electronic devices.

A commonly cited issue with social media is the deceptively perfect ideals it promotes. For instance, there are many lifestyle influencers on platforms, like YouTube and Instagram, now who share snapshots of their daily life. These snapshots often show the influencers having perfectly happy moments and wearing the best clothes. As very impressionable beings, adolescents, like most people, are easily influenced into thinking that the activities done by these influencers define the perfect life and that the clothes and accessories they use are mandatory for happiness. This yields unrealistic expectations, which can never be satisfied by the youngsters’ actual lives. In reality, most content that social media influencers post are far from their regular lives and are made only to attract engagement. The expectations that these lead to, however, are very dangerous because they make youngsters feel inadequate in their lives and, often, lead them to depression.

Conclusion

Despite its many flaws, social media interactions have also shown to help youngsters grappling with mental health concerns. Studies find that several teenagers facing depression find comfort in their online interactions as this allows them to meet people facing similar issues. Knowing that there are other people going through similar difficulties helps them feel less lonely about their issues. This sense of community is a positive attribute of social media platforms.

However, its demerits are far too many and too complex to ignore. Their age and the pressures of puberty put adolescents in a difficult position with respect to finding a balance in their social media presence. Facilitating an open line of communication at home, where they are allowed to discuss anything without judgement, is an important step in helping them overcome these pressures. Educating them at a young age about the dangers of online spaces and paying kind attention to their activities will go a long way in helping balance out the harmful effects that social media can have on adolescents’ mental health.   

Nasreen Basheer, Intern (Batch 2022)