Mental Health and Social Media
Negative Effect of Social Media on Mental Health
Saying social media is popular would be an understatement. With nearly 4oo million users on Twitter, over 1 billion users using Instagram every month and almost 3 billion users on Facebook, it's safe to say social media has a huge influence. However, not all that influence is positive. Posts of fancy vacations, outings with friends, seemingly perfect couples, clean or tidy homes, well-dressed happy looking family photos, unrealistic beauty standards, and the list goes on. Such filtered content can lead one to feeling less than. In addition, various research studies suggest a connection between social media and symptoms of anxiety and depression. For example, a 2016 study using surveyed data 1,787 U.S. adults between the ages of 19 and 32 found a link between social media use and increased depression.
Association between Social Media Use and Depression among U.S. Young Adults - PMC (nih.gov)
"Seeing staged parts from someone’s life can lead you to assume they’re living in complete bliss, even as you know you aren’t."-
Social Media and Mental Health: What's the Connection? (healthline.com)
Unfollow Unhealthy Accounts
These accounts include anything that makes you feel like you're not enough, overwhelmed, drained, etc. Instagram models showing off unhealthy beauty standards, perfect couple accounts, anything news or drama related, or even friends that only post amazing photos of them on vacation or with tons of friends. It's not jealously or being rude. It's prioritizing your mental health.
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How to Have a Healthy Relationship with Social Media | NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness
Take a Break When You Need It
Whether you have Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook for the posts or to communicate with people, it's okay to step back and take a breather for as long as you need. Destress. You owe nobody an explanation. Period. Completely stepping back from social media can be hard, but it’s a good way to help you reconnect to reality. Have a friend change your password so you don’t feel tempted to log back into your account. Then, take notice of how you spend your time. Maybe get back onto an old hobby or sport. Watch a comedy special, dance to music while cooking your favorite meal, brush up on painting or skateboarding.
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Social Media and Mental Health: What's the Connection? (healthline.com)
Connect and Support with Others
Regardless of whether you have social media or not, reaching out and connecting with supportive people is crucial for mental health. If you want to engage with others who share your interests, search for digital communities of people who you have something in common with. From there, you can be more selective with who you connect and engage with. NAMI also offers free and confidential support groups to people struggling with mental health symptoms.
How to Have a Healthy Relationship with Social Media
The topic of social media specifically, needs to be addressed. TikTok clips go viral outside the app to other platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Many users misrepresent disorders, fake disorders, or spread serious misinformation about disorders. The people who do this know who they are and do it intentionally. No, not everyone who posts about mental health is doing this, but it's important to take note of. I've seen several video clips titled "Catching my symptoms on camera" or "What (insert disorder) looks like". Not everyone with Bipolar acts the same. Same with every disorder, etc. TikTok is one of the worst places to get your information on mental health. Glorifying, romanticizing, dramatizing, or downplaying disorders is damaging and toxic. Disorders aren't superpowers. Symptoms are not able to be turned on and off. Mental illnesses are not fun to have, it is simply something people have to live with. Using any symptomatology (real or fake) for attention is very serious and is highly frowned upon.
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Young Women Are Self-Diagnosing Personality Disorders, Thanks To TikTok (elle.com)
The Dangers of Self-Diagnosis | Psychology Today
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The Truth about TikTok and Mental Health
Glamorizing Mental Health
The Harmfulness of Glamorizing Mental Illness - AWARE AE (aware-ae.com)
Credit: Tania Dubayssi
Mental health has been portrayed to look “cool”. This misinterpretation is not only shown on social media, but also in many TV shows and movies. Someone that claims to have “depression” is seen as “cute” or “quirky”. Social media often provides wrong misrepresentations of what mental illness can look like. Because of this, many young people on big platforms such as TikTok or Instagram see it as a repetitive trend or a personally trait and sugarcoated it as seeming that mental illness is something every one goes through and is not something harmful. Social media has given those with big platforms to play out such mental illnesses like depression to be like a comfortable sadness, lying in bed for hours upon days, watching tons of movies, eating ice cream, and staying in the same pajamas for days. On the other hand, anxiety is depicted as a quick fixable change by doing 5-minute breathing exercises or going on a drive to fix how you feel. Moreover, OCD has become a widespread common misdiagnosed illness, being spread around online used in the wrong terms. OCD has become known to be describing someone who is a perfectionist or someone who needs their bedroom clean all the time. Even more so, people are claiming mania to describe someone who just outbursts and does things even if it is 4 AM, claiming themselves to be outspokenly “different”, even with the countless amount of coffee being consumed.
Other illnesses, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and DID are left out as they are seen as unfashionable and less likable illnesses, even though bipolar disorder has been popularized and seen to describe someone who just has outbursts of anger and that when they eventually get what they want, they are “happy” again. These illnesses are still going through a negative stigma because people have yet to create a “gentler” version of such illnesses. These other mental disorders are not seen as “artsy” or “creative”.
The romanticization of mental disorders has been around for centuries. Authors from the 20th century wrote novels and stories emphasizing their characters’ mental well-being to be “charmingly tragic” and “beautifully suffering” from depression. Sad poetry got popular during the 1990s and the 2000s depicting mental health to be “different” and having an overall sad aesthetic.