The Social Media Effect.
Most of us have a social media account, some of you may have Instagram, some may have Twitter and you probably use both, but have you ever asked yourself if you are addicted? As an estimate, five to ten per cent of Americans meet the criteria for social media addiction today.
Why do we become addicted to social media? The short answer is due to its dopamine inducing effects. Our brain has the same reaction to Facebook as it has when you gamble and do recreational drugs, studies have shown that a steady stream of likes, retweets and dislikes is similar to directly injecting a syringe of dopamine into your body.
Due to the effect, it has on the brain, social media affects both physical and mental health. The striatum, which is the part of the brain associated with rewards, lights up every time you use social media, it associates using social media to getting an award, this results in poor decision making.
You may have experienced a sudden rush whenever you get likes or views, your brain gets a heavy dose of dopamine, and then you feel good. The bad part is that social media gives you an immediate response endlessly. You don’t have to work hard for this either, you only have to move your thumbs and hit the post button.
The reward centre of your brain is at its most active when you talk about yourself, in real life, you will talk about yourself thirty to forty per cent of the time, this is healthy and well balanced. Here’s the catch, on Instagram, you will post about yourself eighty per cent of the time! You will then get a comment and then you will experience a rush of dopamine, you will become greedy and fall into the social media vortex. Once you fall into the vortex multiple times, your brain perceives your behaviour as good, which makes using social media into a habit, and then the habit becomes an addiction.
You get addicted quicker if you use social media apps as a coping mechanism for loneliness or stress. The same happens with people who smoke cigarettes, a few puffs and there is a relief for your stress. This causes problems in your relationships, work responsibilities and physical health. To get to a good standard in all three of those activities you have to put in time and effort, these are not immediately rewarding activities.
There is a link between negative mental health and low self-esteem due to social media. Everyone has a great life on Instagram, they travel the world and drive fancy cars, their morning cup of coffee is far better than yours and they live in a penthouse. You start to feel isolated due to the comparison of material objects, so you go on Amazon and look for aesthetically pleasing coffee mugs, then you start seeing curated content on Facebook, and you then get a cocktail of negative emotions such as jealousy.
Research has shown that social media users feel that other people who share the platform are more successful than them, this leads to feelings of inferiority. You start to compare yourself with other peoples lives, your online life is unrealistic, so is the next persons, so stop being self-conscious, your obsession over perfection will lead to anxiety.
Anxiety will lead to FOMO, which is the fear of missing out. You are scrolling through your feed and you see that one of your friends was at a party that you were not invited to and boom! You feel like you are insignificant, that no one cares about you, that Trevor is a dick for not inviting you, so you start looking at yourself in the mirror, you see the pimple on your face, the bags underneath your eyes and you realise that you are not Brad Pitt. It must feel good to be Brad Pitt.
Even worse, you start taking time out of the day to check on Instagram, to look for any events that you are missing out, you spend money on getting invited to parties, and at the end of the month, you look at your bank account and start feeling sorry for yourself. Your work performance takes a toll, the relationships that matter starts to feel stupid and of no value, in a 2017 study, researchers at Harvard found that social media has a significant detrimental effect on the emotional well-being of chronic users and their lives, negatively impacting their real-life relationships and academic achievement among those still in an educational setting.
All is not lost, if you feel that you are addicted or you simply want to decrease your social media time, then I can help you.
The first way that you can do this is by moving all the apps into a folder far away from the home screen, if you are feeling brave, delete the apps and set up a time to log in to them, I have done this for a month, but since my screen time is only two hours a day, I reinstalled the apps. To help you stay focussed, you can turn off the notifications or you can put your phone on aeroplane mode.
Secondly, you can use an app called Forest. The idea of this app is that you schedule a period where you will not use your phone, during this time the app will grow a digital plant if you use any app during this time Forest will send you a notification telling you that your plant is dying. 2020 has been a tragic year, don’t let a digital plant die because of your selfishness.
Thirdly, get a screen-free hobby, I like to read, during this time, do not use your phone, studies have shown that people who engage in a screenless hobby for two hours a week have better mental health than their peers who don’t have a hobby.
Last but not least, keep your phone out of your bedroom or in a cupboard before you sleep. I have experimented with this and I can tell you that it works, what happens is that you stop scrolling through Instagram and you get a good nights sleep. A good nights sleep is amazing for your mental health.
When you want to take a break from social media or your phone, keep it in a cupboard, out of your peripheral vision, this helps improve your focus which enhances your workflow and helps you become better.
To conclude, here are the takeaways from this article:
- Social media causes a dopamine rush to occur, which makes our brain think that we are doing a rewarding activity.
- You will get addicted quicker if you use social media as a coping mechanism, treat it as an app, not as a coping mechanism.
- Instagram and real life are two different entities, Instagram life can be misleading, don’t believe everything you see.
- Find ways to get rid of your social media cravings, use the above methods.
Have a happy weekend!