Social Media Is Making Us Miserable: Here’s What You Can Do About It
By: James Briscoe
Tags: Sadness, Social Media, Sleep, Mental Health, Social

Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

For better or for worse, social media is now a major part of our day-to-day lives. In the fifteen years or so since Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in his Harvard dorm room, social media has grown exponentially and now boasts 3.2 billion daily users across the planet — in other words, nearly half the world’s population.

Social media has made it possible for us to interact like never before. But at the same time, there is increasing concern about its impact on our mental health, especially on younger generations and digital natives.

Let’s take a look at some of the mental health concerns currently arising around social media, and what you can do to prevent it from having a negative impact on your life and wellbeing.

It incites us to compare ourselves to others

Deep down, you’re well aware that Instagram influencers don’t really roll out of bed looking like that, despite what their artfully lit #morningroutine selfies may try to have you believe. You know that while your middle school classmate’s recent holiday in the Maldives was undoubtedly wonderful, her idyllic family life can’t be as harmonious and hiccup-free as she makes it out to be. And yet, you can’t help but compare yourself to these glossy people with their seemingly perfect lives.

Theodore Roosevelt famously said that “Comparison is the thief of joy” — and that was a century or so before the advent of Instagram. Psychologists refer to something called “Social comparison theory”, which explores the idea that individuals determine their own worth by measuring themselves against people who share similar attributes, such as gender, socio-cultural background or age.

Comparing yourself with others isn’t necessarily unhealthy, and in some cases, can motivate you to try harder and reach specific goals. It’s when the need to measure yourself against others becomes compulsive, however, that it is detrimental to your mental health, with research showing that people who do so are more likely to experience envy, guilt, regret, or defensiveness.

So what can you do to rein in the temptation to compare yourself with other people? First of all, take a step back from your social media feeds.

If a certain person is triggering feelings of insecurity or inferiority, don’t be afraid to hit the “unfollow” button or hide them from your feed. Meditation can be a useful tool to ground yourself, reconnect with reality and ultimately help yourself identify your triggers and avoid them. Oh, and those #nofilter selfies? It turns out in over one in ten cases, the hashtag wasn’t actually warranted. Always good to know!

It negatively affects our wellbeing

Social interaction is highly important to human beings, and there is a strong correlationbetween the amount of time we spend interacting with others and our level of happiness. So how is it that social media, which supposedly brings people together and facilitates communication, is being increasingly linked with depression?

More and more studies seem to be confirming that social media not only incites us to constantly compare ourselves to others, but also increases negative feelings such as sadness and despair. The question has generated so much concern over the past few years that Facebook itself felt obliged to address the issue and provide some suggestions on how to use the service in a more positive fashion.

One study pointed out a correlation between Facebook use and decline of life satisfaction levels in teenagers, while another found that limiting social media actively decreased feelings of loneliness and depression. The reasons why social media is negatively impacting our mental health may include social comparison, a lack of “real-life” human connection, and even the effect of blue light on our circadian rhythm (more on that below).

If you feel that social media may be having a negative impact on your general well-being, why not make an effort to use it for its original purpose — facilitating human interaction?

Instead of passively consuming others’ content, actively engage by sharing your own posts, exchanging with your loved ones, catching up with a long-lost friend or even organising a real-life get-together — one thing that is proven to have a positive impact on our wellbeing.

It’s highly addictive

Reading the above, you may catch yourself thinking “But if social media makes us feel so awful, then why are glued to it all day long?”. At which point, anyone who has ever been a smoker will nod ruefully. Yes, the word you’re looking for is addiction.

It all boils down to one thing: dopamine. Dopamine is a “feel-good” brain chemical that rewards beneficial behaviors and motivates us to repeat them, kicking in when we take a bite of a delicious meal, during exercise and following successful social interactions (among others). Dysfunctional dopamine pathways are shown to be responsible in the case of addiction.

Studies have shown that we get a “hit” of dopamine from positive social stimuli such as smiling faces or laughter. When you take into account the fact that social media via our smartphones provides us with an almost unlimited supply of potential dopamine hits, the truly addictive nature of social media comes into focus. To put things even more bluntly, social networks are leveraging the same neural circuitry as cocaine and gambling to keep us coming back time and time again.

Social networks are (mainly) free and therefore rely on revenue from advertisers to turn a profit, resulting in an arms race between platforms for your time and attention. Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, recently admitted that “The thought process was: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’”.

So with companies working hard to keep your eyes glued to your smartphone screen, what can you do to break the cycle? Yet again, mindfulness can be a big help: each time you pick up your phone to check Instagram or Facebook, pause and ask yourself if you really need to do so.

You can also remove all notifications except those from actual people (i.e direct messages), set your phone to greyscale to avoid being triggered by the red notification icon, remove social media apps from your home screen and stop using your phone as an alarm clock.

Which brings us to another question…

It’s literally keeping us awake at night

While scrolling through your social media feeds until four in the morning is obviously not the best way to get a restful night’s sleep, it turns out that social media may be specifically related to sleep problems.

Technology, in general, has been getting a bad rap for decades when it comes to keeping us up all night. TVs, tablets, smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices emit short-wavelength, artificial blue light that delays the body’s circadian rhythm, suppress the production of melatonin and make it much harder for us to fall asleep.

However, scientists are starting to suspect that social media may be all the more damaging for our sleep patterns, through a combination of blue light emissions, the interactive nature of social media content, the temptation to spend time on social networks instead of taking exercise or quite simply, the aforementioned addictive nature of social media that keeps us scrolling well into the night. A 2016 study showed that people who use social media for two hours a day are twice as likely to suffer from disturbed sleep, meaning more difficulty falling asleep and poor sleep quality.

An easy way to limit the negative impact of social media on your sleep patterns is quite simply to leave your phone in another room when you go to bed.

If you use your phone as an alarm, you can put it far enough away to keep you from reaching for it during the night. At the same time, try to get into the habit of putting your phone away at least an hour before you go to bed in order to limit your exposure to blue light and give yourself time to disconnect.

Taking a step back from social media may be easier said than done, but there’s no need to deactivate all your accounts or impose harsh restrictions on your screen time. Separating yourself from your social networks for even a few hours can be beneficial, as can delimiting particular times during the day in which to distance yourself from your smartphone.

Generally speaking, a more mindful approach in which you pay active attention to just how much time you spend on your social media accounts (and what you’re actually looking at) is a great place to start. Start making some small changes now, and your mental health will thank you for it.