Impact of Social Media on Mental Health

Let's talk about the impacts of social media. It's something that is talked about a lot. I feel like it's always these negative ideas and connotations around it. And not to say that's not true. And there's also some positive too.

And so it's a balanced, it can be a balanced way to engage in the world. Let's talk about both the mental health positive and negative impacts. And then let's also talk about how to engage with it in a healthy way.

Positive Impacts of Social Media

So let's start with positive. Some of the positive impacts are you can stay connected to friends, family, co-workers, someone you met at a restaurant... who knows. Someone you dated, someone... your neighbor. There's a lot of people you can stay connected to. That's cool. You see what they're up to. And then you can also have access to different support groups, mental health information. I like it for shopping, personally.

That can be a little dangerous, of course. Maybe I should move that into the negative impacts.

Negative Impacts of Social Media

And then, so what are the negative impacts? The big one, the really big one that I think we all can automatically think of, which is the social comparison piece. We all do it as humans.

We're always, unfortunately comparing ourselves to other people. It's just a natural part of being a human. It's how we have frame of reference into our own identity and who we are and what we want out of life. But when we do it a lot, and some of us do it more than others for varying degrees, it can lead to low self esteem.

It can lead to depression, anxiety. It can lead to feelings of doubt, self-doubt, insecurity. Significant negative impacts. Another big one is the prevalence of and the impact of cyberbullying. That's huge. And cyberbullying isn't just, sometimes we think of that for, 18 and under for younger people, but that is, as we know, absolutely not true.

People get behind a keyboard and go nuts and say things that would never say to somebody in person. And that happens to everybody. And I think the younger people are going to be more susceptible and vulnerable, but that doesn't mean we're not all impacted, especially as adults. And then the last one is, anytime we're excessively online or, on social media, we're reducing the real life interactions and productivity that we can do.

It's a distraction and sometimes we need a little distraction, but if again, we're using it in an excessive way that's not a very healthy way to go about it.

Strategies for Healthy Engagement

So some strategies for healthy engagement: You're going to want to limit that screen time and ways to do that are different monitoring tools.

There's different apps for that. There's ways you can set an alarm or, I'm going to go on Instagram for 20 minutes right now, and I'm going to cut myself off then and really sticking to it and having those boundaries. And another way to have healthy engagement is to follow more positive accounts and to unfollow the negative ones.

I think another piece around this is maybe not getting too lost in the comments where the negative comments can lay. And lastly, being mindful of the emotional responses that you're having and engaging in a thoughtful way. And what does that mean, right? Immediately, if you can start to feel like a lump in your throat and you're having bodily sensations or frustration or whatever.

And so then you ask yourself, what's going on right now? Why do I feel this way? And often it's some social comparison that we're doing, or, I think a big one that this happens for is people are traveling and it's like, oh, how do they get to travel? I'm at work. I'm at home. I'm taking care of kids.

I'm... whatever. And often people only post when they're traveling, and they only post when they're going to a cool restaurant, or doing an activity, or they're not posting when they're cleaning their kitchen and putting their kids to bed or whatever the more mundane things.

Summarizing all of that it's helpful again to think that: It's not just all negative and that there are some positives. So how do we increase those positive interactions? And just monitoring your time, noticing those interactions, trying to follow the more positive accounts and making sure you're still engaging with people in person as well.

And maybe you're using it as a tool to keep connected with people that you don't see as often. And then maybe it's a way to make plans with people that you then can see more often because you realize you miss them. Lastly, if this becomes, for some of us too big of a distraction or too difficult, it can be helpful to reach out to a therapist to talk about how it's making you feel insecure or having self-doubt and just talking to a professional about the effects of it and ways to manage it in a more effective way.