Social Media and Mental Health

There is a fine line separating the positive connections of social media from those that slowly deteriorate your mental well-being. These days, social media is so woven into the fabric of our daily lives that it has become increasingly difficult to balance along this line. From the euphoria that stems from a viral post to the anxiety that comes with an unanswered message, these digital platforms have a direct correlation with our mental health. However, the digital landscape continues to expand and we begin to rely more heavily on social media to keep us connected to the world around us. Within this complex digital experience it is important that we learn to balance this line to protect ourselves from the mental strain social media is capable of.

First, let’s explore the brightside this digital world has to offer. Before social media, our sense of connection and community was limited to the people present in our immediate lives. Those who we encountered day to day or those we consciously and constantly kept in touch with. While this may be desirably simple, what happened when good friends moved away or people you were once fond of fell out of touch? Often, you would rarely hear from them again. It is undeniable the wonders social media offers by keeping people connected and intertwined with their larger community. Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat give us the opportunity to stay in touch with more people over a longer period of time. They also offer the opportunity for people to come back together and cultivate a sense of belonging even if they are not always present in each other's daily lives. These platforms give us the opportunity to find connection, support, and community at any given moment. This proves to be a powerful tool in bringing people together in positive ways.

The ability to connect with others can be powerful. This is the same reason social media platforms can also cultivate a harmful space to our mental health. The largest concern across these platforms is our tendency towards comparison. While someone posing a highlight reel of their life can open the door to connection and community, it can also lead to unrealistic expectations and feelings of inadequacy among other viewers. If you are constantly bombarded with posts of people’s unsustainable, glamorous lifestyles and unrealistic realities, you are bound to feel like you are not living up to an impossible standard. Social media glorifies our reality. It is a platform bound to portray only the best aspects of our world, the only ones worth posting. This becomes a double edged sword. It creates this false sense of reality that leads us to believe that others we look up to are living perfect lives. Lives we desire for ourselves. This inclines us to place seemingly perfect people on a pedestal in our minds, constantly comparing our realistic lives, leading us to question our own realities. This false comparison can lead to misguided pressure, anxiety, low self esteem, self criticism, and hate. It is important to recognize that these picture perfect portrayals are inaccurate depictions of the best aspects of people’s equally normal lives. The mistake we make is believing in the facade these people fabricate to make themselves feel better about themselves. This is where one can easily stumble over that fine line and lose our connection with reality.

We can condemn social media all we want but in reality, it is only a digital reflection of our own minds and experiences. We portray ourselves only how we want to be seen. Then we tear ourselves down behind closed doors striving for standards that cannot exist. But we also find connection and ease in the digital world that social media opens at our fingertips. It is up to us to find that balance so that we can preserve social media’s positive effects on our mental well-being.