How Social Media Can Affect Your Mental Health
Social media can be a great tool for businesses, meeting new people, relationships, and finding people that have similar interests that you do. It allows us to connect with people on the other side of the world in a way that was never done before. But social media can have negative effects, too. When people post on social media, they are posting their highlight reel. However, when people consume social media, they often forget this. As a result, people are comparing their lives to the unrealistic life that someone is curating online.
Comparison is a challenging habit to overcome. It’s natural to want to compare ourselves to others or want to change certain things about ourselves. But if you are spending hours on social media each day, you may be comparing yourself more than you think. Social media facilitates this comparison because people are usually sharing the highlights of their lives. Essentially, you could be comparing your struggles with someone else’s highlights. This is not an accurate comparison in the slightest! When we compare ourselves on social media often, it can leave us feeling awful about our self-worth.
In addition to comparison, social media can also bring up feelings of anxiety. Anxiety involves feelings of consistent stress, fear, and dread. Social media could bring up these stressful feelings for a variety of reasons. For example, social media allows all news and information to be at our fingertips at all times. The news can bring up feelings of stress and fear, depending on the situation. Stress can also come up for people if they are dealing with negative comments from peers on their posts.
Social media can bring feelings of depression also. It’s not accurate to say that social media causes depression. But it can certainly contribute to those feelings. As we mentioned above, the news can be stressful but also sad at times. It’s important to be informed, but if we consume too much of it on social media, it could lead to negative feelings.
There are some ways to combat the negative effects of social media that can be helpful. Limiting time on social media can be challenging, but this is the most effective way to combat the negative feelings associated with social media. This doesn’t mean you have to delete all your social media accounts. Even limiting your social media usage to certain times of the day could be helpful. Therapy is another way to help you change the way you use social media. Seeing a counselor in person (or online) can be a helpful way to work through these feelings or thoughts. Therapists also might use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to help patients rewrite some of their negative thoughts or beliefs that come from using social media.
Social media has transformed our society and the way it operates. Sometimes, it’s hard to even imagine a world without it. Social media can facilitate connection in a unique way. However, when consuming social media, it’s imperative to check in with yourself and how you are feeling while doing it. It’s important to avoid comparing yourself to other people’s posts on social media because, often, it doesn’t realistically reflect their lives. Hopefully, with time, social media will get to show less unrealistic things and more relatable things. Regardless, social media is not going anywhere anytime soon. Improving your relationship with social media can improve your mental health drastically. If you are interested in working with a therapist or online counselor to help you navigate your relationship with social media, you can contact us here.
References
https://www.verywellmind.com/link-between-social-media-and-mental-health-5089347
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6940852/
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-cognitive-behavior-therapy-2795747
Keywords: social media, mental health, CBT, online counselor [Michigan]