As a counsellor and psychotherapist, I am often asked about the effects social media can have on our mental health, mainly by concerned parents of young clients who I see in my private practice. Needless to say, there’s already a wealth of material, studies, and articles on the negative and positive impact of social media, but I can only comment from my own professional experience and base my conclusions and opinions on the numerous conversations I have had with many of my young clients who are aged 13-plus. And for me, unfortunately, the overwhelming evidence of experience I have been witness to suggests that in a large majority of cases the negative outweighs the positive by a long shot – and the predominant issue seems to be, ironically, a deep sense of isolation coupled with a loss of confidence in oneself.
As we all know by now, many young people these days will spend several hours in a day interacting with social media apps like Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, with most struggling to be separated from their beloved smartphones for any length of time, even when it’s time to go to bed and sleep; the trusty smartphone is ever on hand to connect you with ‘friends’ and keep the so-called social interaction alive. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that in many cases we are dealing with an addiction – a stimulant or behavioural pattern that we struggle to control – and if this particular stimulant and behavioural pattern is indeed an addiction, then we have to ask ourselves the question; how many forms of addiction do we know of that are good for us?
Can social media have positive effects or bring benefits? Of course it can, and there are numerous ways in which we see social media being a powerful and positive addition to our modern culture. But when we see the effects on individuals who have ‘fallen through the net’, and as a counsellor I have to say that the net in this case seems to catch a majority rather than a minority, it’s clear that we are witnessing an epidemic of anxiety, depression and a kind of self-imposed isolation amongst our young people today, and unfortunately intensive and unchecked social media interaction seems to play a key role in this worrying trend.
At the risk of appearing to over-simplify what seems to fuel this addiction, I have found a common thread in individual’s experiences and how they describe what keeps them ‘plugged-in’ – and that is simply the sense of being recognised, being popular, being seen as socially successful, whether that is to do with how many virtual friends you have and how many likes and comments you receive, and these social rewards seem to provide an immediate and powerful sense of gratification and achievement. The more followers, comments and likes you have acquired, the more exhilarated and gratified and apparently popular or successful you are. However the downside to this is that not achieving enough of these virtual rewards or not receiving as many as another online friend can have the opposite effect and create an all-consuming sense of disappointment, feelings of inadequacy, believing you’re unpopular, and many young people can find these negative emotions and supposed social failures extremely difficult to cope with.
They are bombarded with their peer group’s newsfeeds… and newsfeeds by their very nature will show everyone else doing well, looking happy, on holiday in sunny photos, nights out with friends, doing well in school, college or in the new job. But as we all know, everyone has the same or similar worries and pressures to deal with, but the newsfeed only shows how wonderful life is, and it is surprising to see how deeply this false sense of ‘newsfeed-wellbeing’ can affect people who feel they are not as happy or successful as they apparently should be.
The leading social media platforms continually congratulate themselves on how well they connect people, and in some ways this can be true of course, but often this connection, or friendship, is superficial and fleeting at best, and often utterly meaningless in terms of what true social interaction really means.
We type instead of talking, we scan and comment instead of listening, communicating, experiencing and learning, and you don’t have to be qualified to recognise that this type of isolated virtual interaction is not a meaningful or healthy replacement for the valuable personal one-to-one interaction we experience with real people in real environments!
From my experience of counselling young people I have found that the more time they spend on social media apps the more socially isolated they become, and this is the worst thing we can do to affect for our mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. When a young mind becomes so firmly plugged-in to, and conditioned by, the online friendship world, the simplest of normal day-to-day interactions can often become more difficult and alien to their personalities. It’s extremely worrying to hear a young person tell me that they struggle to speak to a waitress to order some food, or to ask a teacher or colleague a question, or to communicate on the most basic level in person to another human being, and believe it or not, even a simple “hello” can feel like an overwhelming task at times. And often these are difficulties they were not experiencing prior to excessive social media interaction.
So therein lies the paradox – obsessive social media use can contribute dramatically to problems in essential and genuine social interaction amongst young people and their families, friends and colleagues – and these are the people that really count! And it’s an issue I work hard at to reverse and repair with my young clients.
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