Contents:
Medical Video: Is Social Media Hurting Your Mental Health? | Bailey Parnell | TEDxRyersonU
Try checking how many social media sites you have on your mobile. Are you only active and always active on Facebook - or active on all platforms, starting from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter simultaneously? Psstt ... Your answer can reveal a lot about your mental health.
Apparently, the more social media accounts you have, the more likely you are to experience depression and anxiety. Wow!
Why can social media trigger depression and anxiety?
The team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh found that people who are actively involved in seven of the eleven most popular social media sites - Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine, and LinkedIn - are associated with three times the increased risk of depression and anxiety, compared to those who use only one or two social media or not at all, even after the use of social media has been adjusted to the total time spent at each site.
The researchers did not rule out the possibility that the relationship between using multiple social accounts and symptoms of anxiety and depression was a direct causal relationship. On the one hand, it could be that people who suffer from depression or anxiety tend to be involved in more choices of social media sites. Using multiple platforms at once can be a way to find out which channels are most comfortable for them to express and also make them feel accepted by the user community in them.
But this connection can also occur in healthy people who struggle to keep their existence on several different platforms, and then this pressure triggers symptoms of depression and anxiety. For example, a celebrity with thousands of followers who have to deal with negative reproach and comments, but at the same time he must still present a professional persona in the public eye.
Multitasking and blunder interactions on social media can foster negative emotions
Switching between different social media platforms, aka multitasking, can have an impact on the mental health of users. Previous research conducted at Stanford University found multitasking proved to be a method of solving tasks that were less productive than completing them one by one.
In addition, people who receive multiple streams of electronic information, such as notifications, tend to be unable to pay attention, remember information, or switch from one task to another as well as people who handle one thing at a time. Multitasking is known to be associated with poor cognitive and mental health outcomes.
On the other hand, each sodial media site has one unwritten rule, cultural assumptions, and their respective features. This can further defeat users to manage and manage their major world profiles when the use of their social media site accounts increases. This can lead to negative moods and emotions.
There are also more opportunities for blunders on social media, which can be a viral issue that leads to repeated shyness - the more your blunders are shared and discussed, the more often you have to experience flashbacks of bad memories, and also (maybe) regrets . This mental stress can interfere with cognitive health.
Social media does not always have a negative impact
Of course, like the two sides of a coin, we also know that social media does not always all have a negative impact. Being an active netizen on various social media platforms can provide positive benefits in how to give individuals a sense of involvement in society, help people feel not alone, feel more supported, and have hope.
Understanding the direction of the relationship between social media and depression is important for the future. If social media use can cause or exacerbate depression, there is a great deal of work that must be done to examine the reasons behind it so that it has the potential to guide high-risk users away from these sites.
On the other hand, if depressed people turn to social media to seek emotional support - and if it is proven that it can help - then we might really want to encourage social media use among depressed patients.
At the end of the day, all of this will return to the importance of finding a healthy balance in interacting in cyberspace - and keeping in mind that what is usually uploaded to the website is only a version of reality that has gone through the editing process meticulous.
