Author: GuardianOwl

In the city of Long Beach, California – where bonmente’s physical practice is located – and cities across the globe, social media has become an integral part of many people’s daily lives. 

Billions of daily or monthly active users scroll through various social networking sites. 

Social media is a relatively new phenomenon, and much of its impact on mental health is still under question, or else not wholly understood. What negative effects social media has on individuals and families, especially those with histories of mental illnesses like depression, is a major focus of current mental health care research.

However, work in the realm of cyberpsychology, which seeks to understand the psychological effects of internet usage, has predated the advent of Facebook (back when there was still the “the” in Facebook, as in “thefacebook”). 

The idea that “going online” could have a potentially adverse impact on an individual’s mental health has been a concern for psychology researchers – and mental health professionals like psychiatrists – from the dawn of the Internet age. 

Increasingly, it has become a problem for mental health professionals with patients whose mental health struggles are exacerbated by using social media. In some cases, the use of social media even contributes to the development of mental health issues in patients. 

For example, an issue that researchers frequently point to is the link between photo-heavy platforms and the development or intensification of body-image issues and eating disorders. 

For social media users based in certain parts of the United States (specifically, California and Florida) and struggling with mental health issues potentially linked to social media usage, bonmente can help.

The Rise of Social Media – and Its Impact on Mental Health 

Since 2012, the average user of social media consistently spends more than 90 minutes a day on social media, and more recently the amount is between two and two-and-a-half hours. 

Whereas in 1997, fewer internet users existed, with heavy users often engaging in niche topic forums. 

Such users would go online to discuss some obscure television show or video game that few people in their offline lives knew or cared about. But the “offline” connections were still there to discuss things like the latest news or everyday stressors. 

In contrast to those niche-interest websites, social media is more like an “everything store” for online conversation—the Wal-Mart of online discourse, if you will. Everything from major world events to small local happenings is a topic of conversation on platforms like Facebook. 

Hence, the appeal of social media to users. Online or not, it’s important to understand social media’s potential impact on mental health.

Unpacking the Mental Health Impact

Potentially Addicting?

The potential that social media can be addicting is a topic of study for researchers, and an idea that is familiar to many people in the public. 

Though a number of psychologists and mental health professionals are wary of claiming that social media can be inherently addicting, the widespread conversation about the potential for addiction is notable. 

Researchers have pointed to the concept of “intermittent rewards” for explaining why social media can be addicting. 

Researchers draw an analogy to a slot machine: just as a gambler at a slot machine can occasionally get a reward, the user of social media scrolls through feeds with the same hope of seeing something rewarding (entertaining, informative, relevant or “relevant” to the user, or whatever other qualities the user may value). 

The crux of the slot-machine analogy is that the user cannot predict when a reward may come. Hence, the motivation to keep scrolling, and keep returning to the platforms, in the hope of getting a reward.

Addiction in itself can be a major mental health issue. People can lose social connections, money, lots of time, and overall mental functioning, among other things, to an addiction. 

Though some researchers believe that “addiction” may not be the right term to use in relation to addictive internet usage (“problematic use” is one suggestion), the fact remains that a problematic relationship to social media can exacerbate or lead to mental health problems. 

Even if you would not consider yourself to have a problematic relationship to social media, there are some research-backed aspects of internet usage that are relevant to using social media in general. 

Media Overload, Negative Emotions, and Algorithmic Boosting of Negative Content

Mental health professionals have been noting how negative emotions like stress have a link to “media overload.” That can involve seeing an abundance of, for example, troubling news headlines about things like violent crime and injustice and war and environmental problems. 

The content-selecting algorithms on social media that shape our feeds generally select content based on engagement, rather than whether it would make a user feel positive. 

That is part of the reason why a typical scroll through a social media feed will feature a mix of “positive” and “negative” posts. Cute cat pictures with tens of thousands of “likes” will be sandwiched between massively controversial posts with a flood of high-emotion comments. 

Social media marketing is also based on user data, leading to more effective ads, which could potentially exacerbate impulse buying for those who struggle with that.

The targeted audience to witness these online social interactions depends on the audience members’ engagement with other posts. The algorithms bring you more of what you are likely to see, whether that is posts about physical activity’s impact on heart diseases or just pictures of cats.

That also partly explains why users of Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram, largely) would keep seeing content that encouraged self-harm and disordered eating, even as workers at Meta were aware of this issue, as exposed in a Wall Street Journal report. 

Social Comparison and Low Self-Esteem

Social comparison involves comparing oneself with other people, be it physically or mentally. Social comparison is universal among humans, although the degree to which one engages in social comparison differs from person to person. So, social comparison in itself is perfectly natural, as it can be a means for learning about the environment, other people, and oneself. 

Social media facilitates social comparison by providing a given user with a constantly replenishing bounty of information about other people, some of whom the user may know “IRL” (i.e., in real life). 

The problem here is that on social media, users constantly expose themselves to highlight reels of others’ lives, selected by the very people featured in the highlight reel. People of all age groups share content on online platforms like social media apps. Young people are especially vulnerable, but social media usage can involve social comparison for all users.

It would be fair to suggest that a good deal of these posts are self-flattering for the user, even in an unconventional way. For instance, a seemingly casual, ill-lit, even “ugly” selfie of someone may really serve to make the person in the photo appear to have the praiseworthy quality of not caring deeply about superficial appearances. 

This perpetual exposure to other people’s “best of” compilations, which may consist of everything from flattering photos to funny comments to moral or political commentary (some posts manage to combine all that and more) is really not what our social-comparison mental faculty, primal and genetically inherited from ancestors, was designed to withstand. 

Overall, social media can be an engine that helps drive low self-esteem in individuals. 

Social Comparison’s Tie-in to Self-objectification on Social Media

What’s especially productive of mentally unhealthy social comparison is that the self-objectification phenomenon observed in cyberpsychology can lead to the false impression in users of social media that they are comparing themselves to other people, rather than media objects of or made by other people. 

From “Self-Objectification and Cognitive Performance: A Systematic Review of the Literature”, a research paper published in Frontiers in Psychology, here is a quick overview of the concept of self-objectification:

While self-objectification is often narrowly defined as the adoption of a third-person perspective on the body, the originators of objectification theory define self-objectification as occurring when individuals “treat themselves as objects to be looked at and evaluated” (Fredrickson and Roberts, 1997, p. 177; italics added).

According to this definition, the adoption of a third-person perspective on the body is a necessary but not sufficient condition for self-objectification. In addition to the perspectival shift from first-person to third-person, self-objectification requires the adoption of an evaluative, appearance-based self-construal.

To evaluate media objects made by other people, under the impression that those media objects can fitfully stand in for other people, not only encourages one to objectify others, but objectify oneself. (“How good can I look in a photograph?”) 

In the realm of body image, comparing one’s physical features to others’ photos can lead to low self-esteem. These photos are often media objects featuring digital representations of others, selected and sometimes edited by the poster.

As far as mental health issues related to body image goes, there has been a wealth of research on the link between the use of social media and body dysphoria and eating disorders, especially among adolescents. 

Arguably, this extends beyond physical characteristics as well. 

Self-perception Could Be Affected by More than Just Photos

The asynchronous feature of computer-mediated communication allows people to take their time in composing and drafting captions, comments, and text posts. Online, you generally don’t need to answer or share information in real time. 

The result is that online, people have greater control of what they “say” (really, the sharing of media objects created for others to interpret) than they would in a “synchronous” in-real-life conversation. 

The result is that people can create comments, captions, and the like, that make that person seem smarter, funnier, more insightful, and in possession other positive social attributes than they would have the chance to seem in an in-real-life conversation. 

Think of those online exchanges where you see a post that you want to respond to, but instead of immediately replying you draft a reply, or even do something else before coming back later to draft a reply. In an in-real-life conversation, people would think you were quite strange if you just froze up or simply walked away while composing a reply to them. 

Just as social comparisons of self-objectifying posts on social media (now there’s a tongue-twisting clause) can lead to body-image issues centering on feeling physically inferior to other people, it can lead to feelings of social inferiority from social comparisons with posts that make the posters seem smarter, funnier, more morally advanced, and the like. 

Think of how many users are on social media, and therefore how many posts are there for social comparison. How many “people” (media objects) there are to social-compare with. 

The Online Disinhibition Effect and Issues with Emotional Regulation

In real life, most of us usually act civil toward strangers. There are obvious reasons for this: you do not know that stranger, and getting on the wrong side of that stranger may lead to conflict that could end poorly for you. 

Even if you walk or run away, that stranger may run (or drive) after you, continuing the confrontation. Obviously, not every stranger would do this, but you get the point – there are clear motivations to avoid conflict in face-to-face interactions. 

It does not have to be a potentially violent escalation, either; sometimes the potential for awkward silence or interaction after conflict could be enough to keep people from steering an interaction down a conflict-laden path. 

The Online Disinhibition Effect

Online, the idea that conflict could lead to something potentially uncomfortable or even dangerous is less of a worry, because you can post from a comfortably “safe” distance from other users. 

This feeling of safety because of that “comfortable” physical distance may be false, as there is of course a nonzero (if close-to-zero) probability in many cases that a given online stranger could look another user up and track that person down for in-person confrontation. 

Most people reasonably believe offline conflicts are unlikely to escalate into in-person confrontations.

The concept of the online disinhibition effect has something to do with this. Online, we feel “safer” to communicate things that we may not otherwise say to others in person. 

Those things could be controversial or productive of conflict. In other words, we may start fights online with people we would avoid saying “fighting words” to in real life. 

Likewise, those things could be vulnerable and “secret”. We may communicate things to an online stranger that we may not share with our closest in-person confidants. In some cases, this can have a positive effect on mental health, in that one feels unburdened of something. 

Sure, people do this offline as well – confession booths and conversations between strangers at bars lead to such behaviors. 

But the idea behind the online disinhibition effect is that this lowering of one’s guard is common to internet usage. (You can read an influential paper on this phenomenon here.)

Social media users may grow accustomed to sharing or seeing things they wouldn’t normally encounter or express offline. This habit can lead to decreased inhibition and potential problems in relationships or social settings.

Conversely, seeing other people get into conflicts online may make one fearful or anxious of fellow humans. (“Are other people really this aggressive? Judgmental? Prone to ostracization?”) 

That may lead to problematic levels of inhibition, where one feels unable to sincerely speak one’s mind or act as one wishes among even close friends and relatives, out of the fear of being met with aggression or harsh judgment, either from an individual or a group. Loneliness and its risks of mental health troubles can result. 

Recent research suggests that emotion-regulation difficulties are associated with high online disinhibition, which in turn is associated with uncivil communication. 

Going full-circle, consider the potentially addicting nature of using social media, which can lead to problematic internet use (PIU), which can lead to emotional-regulation difficulties, specifically emotional dysregulation. 

Getting Help from Bonmente

This blog doesn’t cover all the ways social media affects mental health but aims to provide a clear overview.

Mental health conditions can be affected by using social networking sites, leading to worse mental health problems. 

If social media use is affecting your mental health, reach out to bonmente for support and guidance.

You may have deactivated your social media accounts or simply lowered your usage of a product or service. Long-term mental health challenges may improve with professional care.

We treat a wide range of psychiatric medical conditions that negatively affect people’s lives. We provide exceptional mental health care in California and Florida through in-person and telepsychiatry sesrvices.