Nowadays we live in an environment where we are always online. Every minute of the day it is possible for you to reach out to someone or to share experiences. The ease of communication is significantly enhanced since social media has come to life. Many online platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat have become part of our day-to-day life. We take it with us to bed and it is the first thing we check in the morning. Being in touch with the world around you 24/7.Sounds good doesn’t it?
Well it may, but life online is not only roses and happiness. Research of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has shown that there is a high correlation between the time young adults spent on social media and the likeliness of them to have problems sleeping or reporting symptoms of depression. The more time spent staring at a screen overloaded with content rings along higher chances of depression, low self-esteem and body shaming. So, is it fair to say that technology is actually an enrichment for our general and most importantly psychological well-being? Or are we digging our own graves by posting more and more content on the internet?
Positive effects of social media are most certainly present, mostly teens that struggle with social skills, anxiety to connect to others or live remotely have access to social interaction more easily. Furthermore, support can be found in social media when connecting with groups that have or had similar experiences in life. More positive effects have been found, but what I find striking is the fact that they all relate to the ultimate goal of where a social platform was initially created for. Creating a network, finding friends, stay connected…..
So, what is happening now that is causing this strong correlation between social media and unhappiness, since the purpose of it seems so justified?
It gets to your brain. Receiving a like on your Instagram post or a positive reaction on any content you post online creates a reaction in your brain. It could actually be compared with taking a drug since this sensation lets your brain produce dopamine. A chemical that is associated with pleasure. This is the case since this experience goes alongside a certain feeling of insecurity or unpredictability. You are always unsure about what kind of reaction you could receive, it could be a 100 likes this time of maybe even go viral and reach over 1 million people on their screens. But still, what is the problem with producing dopamine right? The problem is the way we use Instagram for example, since you are in charge of what you post on it you can present the best version of yourself or only the best events in your life. Which is, for the person on the other side of the table maybe tough to take in, since their life, in comparison, not as good as theirs. Seeing this around you 24/7, when you go to bed, when you go to sleep, wouldn’t make you feel good right? Numbers have shown that only 37% feel happy with their time spent on the app, which on the other had indicates that 63% of the Instagram users report feeling miserable. Time for us to change this, or is it already too late in this content addicted society we live in?
References
https://www.psycom.net/mental-health-wellbeing/mental-health-wellbeing-mental-health-wellbeing-how-social-media-increases-loneliness/https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/08/31/loneliness-is-pervasive-and-rising-particularly-among-the-younghttps://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/social-media-mental-health-negative-effects-depression-anxiety-addiction-memory-a8307196.htmlhttps://www.businessinsider.nl/what-happens-to-your-brain-like-instagram-dopamine-2017-3?international=true&r=UShttps://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/05/18/how-heavy-use-of-social-media-is-linked-to-mental-illnesshttps://www.psycom.net/social-media-teen-mental-health
Hi Britt,
Thanks for the great read! I totally agree with you on the part that it is harmful for especially young teen girls (Fisher, 2019) to only see the ‘positive side’ of someones life on social media. Indeed, I think this may cause depression and low-self esteem to them! I also think that we need to take action in this ‘content addictive’ society as you put it. And I think there are more areas to address in this industry. Especially on the product placement in photos on instagram or videos on YouTube. Without teenagers actually aware of the fact they are targeted, companies who do this product placement can drive up their sales. Luckily, with the ‘Broadcasting Act’ we set sail to a transparant industry!
Reference:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2019/06/30/neuroscience-explains-why-instagram-is-so-bad-for-teen-girls/#582aebc76eba
Thanks for your reply Max! I agree, product placement is influencing more and more people to become more and more active on the platform. Making it their ultimate goal to be as good as they are. Maybe even a way to solve this issue is to introduce some sort of restricted area on social media for certain age group that are very influenceable and at high risk for depression. The ‘Broadcasting Act’ is indeed a good initiative towards a more controlled social media!
Very relevant article Britt! I think the main issue is the quick transition of a traditional social platform to the omnipresent and superficial emphasis on the promotion of a ‘perfect’ life. Compared to other social media platforms, Instagram is a real ‘wolf in sheep clothes’. Compared to e.g. Twitter and Facebook it looks like a super friendly social network, since the primary interaction is double-tapping an image to like it. Posts generally tend to do so because of their positivity (perfection) rather than outrage and the most popular accounts are famous dogs and cats. “What is not to like? (Hern, 2018).” Suprisingly, Instagram outranked Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube in terms of having the most negative net impact on well-being (Sparkman, n.d.). As you said, the platform seems to be highly related to unhappiness.It is thus exactly this postivity and fake perfection that makes us feel miserable of our own offline lifes. Even though we feel obliged ourselves to continue to post pictures, making it look like we are always having the best dinners at the hippest places with the coolest friends. Downward spiral isn’t it? While going to bed now (without checking Instagram this time) I just passively hope that, in ten years, Instagram follows the ‘Hyves’ life-cycle and will drop dead soon!
References
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/17/instagram-is-supposed-to-be-friendly-so-why-is-it-making-people-so-miserable
https://pickupmusic.com/how-to-beat-bad-instagram-habits/
Thanks for you reply Hanne!
I totally agree! As also showed in numerous researches Instagram has a huge negative impact on the majority of users implicating that it does not serve its intended goal anymore. But since it is getting more and more commercialised it is hard to get it to a hold just like what happened to Hyves… And what will be it’s alternative? No one seems to be able to live without it and keeps on posting their best selves… So I am curious to see what will happen in the future…
Very interesting (and scary!) topic. It is impressive how we can indeed become addicted to this dopamine release from posting, and how what we see online can change our perception of the world and expectations towards it.
I would like to extend the Information provided in the article with an alternative vision of how the usage of social media could lead to increased unhappiness. Dopamine is a chemical which functions as a hormone and neurotransmitter. It is seen to be the main chemical of pleasure and known to play a big role for human beings as a motivational complement. So, for example, dopamine would be released into the brain after a certain workload or a task is completed. Once you clean your room or finish working on an assignment a positive feeling of satisfaction is being achieved. This feeling can be associated with the release of dopamine. The problem is that the usage of social media also triggers similar effects in the brain. For example receiving likes for your new picture on Instagram or post on Facebook will also cause a Dopamine release. Once the dopamine hunger is killed in such a way, a person will have a hard time motivating himself/herself to do useful work or study related activities.
Thanks for this great addition! Interesting to see that it also affects general motivation in other activities in life. I hope this will become a trigger in our perception on the usage of social media, maybe then we could get a hold on it before this social media Utopia takes over everything in our life.
Hi Britt, really interesting post! I would like to share with you that Instagram is currently testing with hiding likes on posts in seven different countries. The likes on your own post will be visible for yourself, but the likes on someone else’s posts are invisible. I’m not sure whether this will solve the problems you mentioned. A common sentence in reading the news reports is that users are afraid they won’t receive ‘enough’ likes on their post though. Enough is a kind of a vague word here. How do people assess what’s ‘enough’. I can imagine that some users might look at posts from other users in order to assess that metric. In the pilot from Instagram users can’t do that anymore.
Sources: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/30/tech/instagram-hiding-likes/index.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/17/tech/instagram-hiding-likes-test/index.html
Thanks for your reply Niels! Interesting pilot from Instagram, but I doubt whether it would have its intended effect. Isn’t social media way too selfish for it? People actually only care about their own likes, don’t they? The only aspect that they eliminate in this case is the possibility to compare oneself to another, a good thing in my opinion.
On the other hand I think this change would only increase the amount of content posted by the user since people always want to create a reference for themselves, in this case their own other likes.. So this would again be a good trick from Instagram to get more content on their platform and hence commercialise it even more.
Hi Britt, thanks for uploading this interesting blog. As you describe, the story about social media is very complex since it can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. However I do not fully agree with the negative effects you described, since I find them a bit exaggerated and generalised. Social media is very diverse, every social media platform provides a lot of different features, which makes it extremely hard to generalise the effects of social media. A study of Przybylski and Weinstein (2017) found that moderate use (on average 3 hours per day) is not harmful to the mental health of its users. Actually, they found that both non-users of social media and high-users of social media had a lower well-being compared to moderate-users. So non-users don’t appear to have a better well-being than moderate social media users. I’m very curious about your opinion on this!
References:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797616678438
https://theconversation.com/social-media-is-nothing-like-drugs-despite-all-the-horror-stories-79382
Thank you for your reply Michelle! It is indeed a very controversial issue that can be looked at from various perspectives. In my blog I put Instagram under the loop, but when looking at average numbers in which all social media platforms are taken into account (Facetime, WhatsApp, etc..) it may indeed be not as shocking.
However, your view seems quite contradicting itself. How can high-users experience little downsides and how can only moderate-users be the ‘victim’ of social media usage? In my opinion it can be due to the fact that high-users are the ‘influencers’ on the platforms and consider the platform as a means of executing their job and earning money. The moderate-user is the average user on the platform which is the one being influenced. I am not sure whether the research you found has any insights in their testing populations, since I am convinced this might have had a big influence on its findings.
Moreover little research has been done on this topic since it is a relatively “young” problem, future effects are hard to predict since this will take years to show. Most findings that are out now are observations of the current known cases.
Very interesting views on social media Britt!
I agree with part of what you’re saying, but I think strongly that it is possible to turn things around and make social media platforms, Instagram for example, a happy and healthy way to spent your time.
Hannah Schacter studies the digital wellbeing of minors at the University of Southern California, and she found that it is not about the timw you spent on social media but about how you use it (Wong, 2019)
And while Hannah Schacter points towards the user, many feel it is the responsibility of the platforms. In a response to that, Instagram is challenging its own characteristics that made it so successful. They have launched the instagram stories without likes or viewing numbers, they have been testing hiding the amount of likes on posts and as of yesterday are taking drastic measurements to protect users from some of these negative posts. Hiding posts that promote weight loss products or cosmetic procedures for minors or deleting posts with a “miraculous” claim about certain diet or weight loss products (Dodson, 2019; Hamilton, 2019)
The question, however, will be if these platforms change the way they operate, will their audience still return to the app even if they won’t get their dopamine fix? And if they don’t, will there be another company on the horizon that will again prey on people’s inability to use these platforms responsibly..?
References:
http://www.huffpost.com/entry/instagram-hiding-likes-mental-health_l_5cd092d3e4b0548b735e50bc/amp
https://theweek.com/speedreads/836396/instagram-thinks-hiding-likes-could-better-mental-health
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/instagram-cracks-down-on-weight-loss-and-cosmetic-surgery-content-2019-9
Hi Anouk,
Thank you for your reply! Interesting food for thought!
But while reading your post I was mainly wondering how this could be controlled, you are mentioning Instagram wants to influence users by determining what they can see. But isn’t the problem in the user itself? It is the perception of the user and their interpretation of the content that has an impact, in my opinion this can’t be completely controlled by what is displayed. The user will still be looking for this dopamine kick no matter what. However, I do think it is a good experiment for the platforms, and I do hope that this has a positive effect on the (mis)usage of social media platforms!
Hi Britt, thanks for your contribution to this platform, you’re post apparently got some people thinking. I would like to start with saying that, to a certain point, I totally agree with your reasoning. In my opinion, Instagram indeed is the platform where you show ‘the best version of yourself’, which could lead to feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction about your own life.
However, there are also developments which argue that Instagram could help potential victims of depression. For instance, Reece and Danforth (2017) showed that when combining machine learning and data from Instagram, signals of depression can be spotted even before any type of depression is diagnosed. These individuals could be potential targets for a depression and could be treated in an early stage, leading to better prevention and less people going into a depression.
What are your thoughts on these developments?
Cheers,
Source:
Reece, A. and Danforth, C (2017). Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression. Assessed on 08-10-2019 via
https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1140/epjds/s13688-017-0110-z
Hi Michael,
Thank you for your reply and insights! Very cool to see that social media and Instagram in particular can help spot inconsistencies in behaviour with the help of Artificial Intelligence. I am curious just how this will look like in practice since observing faces or recording faces will obviously violate some privacy regulations. However, I do think this is a positive development since data is used for the sake of human well-being instead of commercial purposes.
Curious to see how machine learning will be integrated for the better in social media in the future!
Hi Britt,
Interesting article you wrote Britt!
As a couple others already mentioned in the comment section, I also see a lot of positive effects of social media. On the other side, I recently found out that instagram is testing the effects of hiding the like count for the public. I just looked it up and a while ago, head of instagram Adam Mosseri spoke with Buzzfeed about the tests of hidden likes. He stated it is “about creating a less pressurized environment where people feel comfortable expressing themselves” Mac & Nguyen, 2019). This shows that the many expressed concerns about the negative effects of likes and virality on a individual are taken seriously!
References:
Mac, R., & Nguyen, N. (2019, May 3). Instagram Is Hiding Like Counts From Followers In A New Test. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/instagram-hide-like-counts-in-test
Hi Anouar, thank you for your reply!
I am curious to see when they will start testing this, so that we can see the potential effect!
First of all, thank you for the insightful article Britt! I agree with you that social media has set a dangerous precedent for the future of our society. What is especially worrisome is that social media platforms have been rigging their notifications to withhold and then reward dopamine in bursts. One example of this is Instagram which ‘hides’ the likes on your new posts, to make you feel negative, and then later presents a bunch of them at once to create a large amount of positive feedback to draw you back in. With the effect that social media has been shown to have on our mental health, perhaps it is time for policy makers to step in?
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2018/dopamine-smartphones-battle-time/
Thank you for this addition Emile, very interesting!
I find it rather disturbing that Instagram is hiding certain content on purpose to increase negative feelings at first in order to create a greater dopamine release at the user. I agree that we should make sure that a policy should be installed before content managers of social platforms get too much power. It is evident that they have a greater impact on society that we realize since they are now really getting into our brain… What will be next?