How does social media affect mental health?
Social media has now firmly become a part of our everyday lives, and as a society, we are becoming increasingly reliant on this ever-evolving technology.
Mental health is often framed as something that’s beyond our control. But you might be surprised to learn that social media greatly impacts your mental well-being.
Social media can be a very positive outlet, but is there an effect on people’s mental health? A study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology has investigated the effects of social media use on mental health, particularly for young people and adults. It has been reported that negative mental health and relationship can occur due to social media use in young people.
Ways in Which Social Media Can Affect Your Mental Health
Here are a few ways that social media might impact your mental health.
You’re more likely to feel anxious when there’s a chance you’ll be criticized or shamed online. People who experience anxiety have been shown to be more sensitive to criticism online than people who don’t experience anxiety. But it’s not just because of the criticism itself. There’s also the way people are reacting to it. That reaction can fuel more anxiety. The same is true of bullying and trolling. A simple tweet or angry emoji in your Facebook status can leave you feeling anxious or stressed out.
The other thing to consider is the social media platform itself. How it looks and feels will play a big role in how you interact with it. For example, if Twitter’s timeline feels disorganised or is challenging to navigate, that can leave you feeling out of control.
The feeling of being out of control and unable to have power can lead to mental health problems, like anxiety.
If you’re feeling upset or anxious about an experience you’re having in real life, you may also feel upset or anxious about it online. That can have a major impact on how you feel about your experience.
What this means is that the online version of your experience can have a huge impact on your real-life experience. It’s also worth considering your online identity. If you’re hiding certain aspects of your life online, or you only share positive experiences online, it could leave you with a very skewed sense of reality. That could leave you feeling lonely or isolated.
Mental health problems can make it hard to cope with being unhappy online. That can be difficult. You could try and ignore the things that make you unhappy, but that won’t solve the underlying issue. It could even lead to more problems.
People who experience anxiety and stress often have problems with the way they cope with negative outcomes. For example, they may overthink the best way to respond to someone else’s negative comments. They may also go into self-doubt when they think about how they’ll be judged by others.
As a result, they find themselves getting stressed and anxious about things they feel they have no control over.
Stress and anxiety also reduce our productivity online. If we’re anxious we might be more likely to go on an online rant or spend an inordinate amount of time reading angry or negative comments.