Have you ever become jealous while watching beautiful family pictures of your friend enjoying vacations at an exotic place? 

Have you ever felt envy when someone from your friend-list repeatedly post about his/her professional achievements? 

Have you ever got hurt when you received less likes, and comments on your post compared to your friends? 

Many times you may get frustrated while scrolling Facebook, Twitter or Instagram thinking that everyone else on this planet is enjoying their lives to fullest except you.

The boom of social networking

Ability to get better connected with the world is what attracting all of us towards social media. On these social networking sites, we all love to like, post, subscribe, comment, replay and follow. On an average, we spent two hours of a day on social media. 

The smart phone is now our prime companion even on our dining table. The real-life conversation has been replaced by checking social feeds. 

Each one of us has a personal reason to browse through social media. For some people it may be just a way to stay connected with friends and family and check people’s status updates. For other, it is a powerful knowledge sharing or gaining tool that helps them achieve personally and professionally.

But do you know, these social media platforms have a notable impact on our mental health and behaviour?

Though this digital technology is useful for a number of reasons, there are some negative effects on mental health of an individual.

Connection to mental health 

In current era of digital technology, almost everyone’s life is getting display on social platform. A simple look at the post of family vacation, a professional achievement or buying costly items is putting people in a phase of constant comparison. 

The comparative thoughts like 

“She is slim, I am fat”

“He settled well just at the age of 30 and what the hell I am doing in my 40”

“Why I am not able to afford vacation?”

and so on and so forth are constantly triggering in our mind. 

It’s a human nature to always compare our life with others. Therefore, getting envy on those who are more beautiful, successful, popular and achievers is an unavoidable behavioral response from a human creature. A simple look at the scenic picture of family vacation or a prestigious snap of professional achievement of others can put us in a phase of constant comparison. 

We are constantly comparing our own behind the scenes with best and bright highlights of others. Slowly, we start to assume that these people are more successful, intelligent, beautiful or even lucky. Sometimes these people doesn’t even belong to our friend-list or we don’t know them personally. 

Comparison is to such a great extent that people get jealous when they noted that their friends have more friend-list or followers or get more likes on the  post. The more time we spent scrolling through social media, the more is the feeling of personal dissatisfaction in the life. 

This unfortunately leads to anxiety, low self-esteem, body shaming, loneliness and even depression. Subsequently all these thought process increase person’s feeling of inadequacy. People feel less confidant when they compare their achievements with others and even start to experience change in the sense of own identity.

On the other hand, individual who constantly post status updates and get likes or positive comments are reinforced to check a personal profile for more supportive comments or likes contributing towards reinforcement behavior. Over the period of time, such behaviours are consistently repeated, and it became a hard for a person to simply stop posting.

People who get positive feedback about themselves are strongly addicted to social platforms due to greater reward processing activity in certain parts of their brain. 

With every like they get, there is a release of feel good dopamine in their brain that urges them to post regularly. On one side, this causes a feeling of satisfaction and some great achievement.

These people are using social media as a way to gain more attention from people and boosting their self-esteem. Such people are so obsessed and even takes hundreds of photographs or collect post related information and wait for appropriate time to post on social networking sites. This leads to dependency and compulsive checking behaviour.

Additionally, a constant urge to check for notifications is turning out into addiction. 

It appears that something along the way, the privilege of 24/7 accessibility to social platforms through several resources is calling for an addiction issue. 

Social media exhibit similar behavior dependency like other addictions. We are getting addicted to social media to such an extent, where constant checking of what others are doing and how they are reacting to our post has become crucial part of life. 

Social media addiction shares similar features when compare to other addictions, including neglecting personal life, mental pre-occupation, escapism and mood modifying experience. People feel worried and uncomfortable when internet access is not available to them. On worst scenario, people start to experience withdrawal symptoms when they are not able to log on social sites. 

People even notice “Phantom vibration syndrome” which is an anxiety inducing feeling that phone is ringing or vibrating even it is not. 

People are so connected to their phone as it has become a part of their body. Many times, people get concerned about missing a call or text and become extra aware of the sensation that could be wrongly interpreted as phone vibration.

The dark side of social media is enhancing insecurity among people and calling them to take a break from it. Nevertheless, at the same time peer pressure to stay connected, they are concerned about missing of an important news feed.

 “What if I am not a part of discussion and what if I will get neglected from friend circle” are major concerns among people thinking to quit social platform. 

People are really concerned that they will miss potential connections and opportunities if they stay away from a networking circle. This fear of missing out (FOMO ) is basically a pervasive anxiety or apprehension of missing out of experience that others are perceived to be having. 

Unfortunately, FOMO leads to compulsive desire to stay connected socially through an online platform. FOMO is one of the significant reasons for extreme dissatisfaction resulting in poor self-esteem, feeling of inferiority, loneliness and depression.

Moreover, many people are experiencing online harassment in the form of nasty comments. People even noticed discrimination, gender biased, harsh reply and trolling. 

It also involves posting, sharing or sending false information/rumors about other individual causing humiliation. When this happens repeatedly, it can turn out into serious problems in the form of threat, anxiety, fear and worry.

Interestingly enough, social media that thought to connect people is somewhere disconnecting person from inner self. The long-lasting effect could bloom into mental health issues if remains unchecked and unaddressed.

Social media is a good platform to communicate and stay connected with friends and family. It is a powerful knowledge sharing or gaining tool where people can join different groups or network with like-minded people and share a similar interest.

On these discussion groups, people can gain information on various aspects such as career, job opportunity or skill development, etc. It is a platform where people can explore about hobbies, creativity or passion. People can share their expertise or express their ideas.

And most important aspect of social media is its ability to reach millions of people within short time. This makes it a helpful platform where you can share valuable resources with others. Take the latest example of COVID-19, when many people offer help to each other through social media only.

You see, social media has given us a power to share and make the world more connected. 

If you take a closure look on social media contents, you can notice that it has both good and bad things. Therefore, social media has both positive and negative sides.

Then why are we looking in other people’s life through virtual window when we are aware about the real world. All of us know that what is a portrait on social feed is not an accurate picture of real life. 

So, we can say that it is always up to us how we uses this platform.

Staying offline in 2023 is impractical and abstinence is not the solution. However, reducing dependency on social media and crafting a better online experience is useful.

No doubt, social media has given us an opportunity to share and express what we feel right, discover a world, gain knowledge and contribute towards society. However, its use in limitation is necessary.

To sums up, though excessive social media use is ruining mental health, but it is a revolutionary tool to lift your life with safe online practices.

Disclaimer

Mediclin Brain Health’s content is for informational and educational purposes only. Our website is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.