Social media's effect on the brain

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Chances are, if you use the internet you also use some form of social media, because as of 2021, there are 3.6 billion people using social media worldwide. This is no surprise because social media provides many benefits in our fast-paced, modern life. With social media we can easily keep in contact with friends and family, be informed on the latest news locally and globally, learn about new products or places, keep informed about your favorite artists, and just take a break from every day life. While these benefits are incredibly useful, and sometimes even fun, there are of course downsides from too much use. Currently, there are around 210 million people worldwide who are considered to be effected by social media addiction.

When used in small amounts, social media is safe for mental health, but when too much time is spent on browsing these sites or apps, there are a surprising number of problems that can arise. Sure, it may be nice to see how well your family and friends are doing in life or to see the fancy things that influencers show off on their accounts, or how many likes these posts get, but for some people, constantly seeing things to compare our own lives to can have negative effects on mental health. These comparisons lead to "FOMO", or fear of missing out, which can lead to feelings of anxiety, jealousy, loneliness, and even depression. Not only can this lead to those negative mental health effects, research has shown that receiving comments and likes on social media causes a reward response in our brains, which increases dopamine, which is the chemical that causes feelings of happiness. That may sound positive, but the desire for this feeling leads to more social media use to try to keep creating the dopamine flood. When this becomes harder to achieve with social media, feelings and symptoms of depression can arise.

The negative side effects of too much social media wouldn't cause as much concern if it didn't effect so many people, but with 2/3 of Americans stating that social media has a negative effect on their mental health, and with an increase of smart phone users by 39% since the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an alarming amount of people already being effected and more who are at risk of becoming effected by social media addiction. In a recent study where 1,000 adults who were not facing any symptoms of depression then used and tracked their social media usage for six months, it was found that almost 10% now displayed symptoms of depression. The correlation between social media use and depression of these study participants also indicated that those who spent more time on social media than those who spent two hours or less daily, also resulted in more, and stronger depression symptoms. These side effects of too much social media usage is also prevalent in younger social media users. In another recent study, 25% of young social media users believe that using social media is having a negative effect on their mental health. More alarmingly, it has been found that teens who use social media for over five hours per day are twice as likely to develop depression and of those, 71% are more likely to contemplate suicide when those feelings of depression arise. There are many other problems associated with too much social media usage that are not as severe, but still may lead to more severe problems. Sleep is often greatly disturbed, sometimes because users may simply stay on their social sites or apps instead of getting the sleep they need in search of more dopamine, but also because of the blue light associated with screens, particularly phone screens. This blue light inhibits the creation of melatonin, which our brains need to achieve productive, restful sleep. Lack of sleep can lead to anxiety, depression, irritability, impairment, memory loss, and even high blood pressure and obesity. Another downside is that the constant viewing of delicious foods, not only causes more FOMO, but often times increases appetite and leads users to eat when they aren't truly hungry.

While this might seem grim, there are many things we can do to ensure that we can still enjoy the benefits of social media without harm to ourselves. The first thing that one should do if they feel they are using too much social media is to track their usage time. If you begin to see that social media is taking more of your time than more important activities such as time with family and friends, exercise, hobbies, and upkeep of your home and self, you can easily see that it may be time to scale back your usage or take a small social media break. We can also train ourselves to simply care less about social media by limiting our access to it. If you stop checking social media first thing in the morning and last thing at night, it may reduce the stressful feelings and anxiety about needing to check it so often. Not eating while using social media also helps in this way, but also decreases the likelihood of overeating while browsing. Other simple tricks to force yourself to adapt to using social media less are to make phone-free areas to force you to move away from the chance of using social media unnecessarily, turning off your notifications to certain apps to reduce checking them frequently and therefore potentially scrolling longer than needed, only use the desktop versions of social media apps so that you don't have constant access to them, changing the layout of your apps on your phone so that you don't open them out of habit, turning on grey scale on your phone so that the apps are less appealing to your brain, or simply taking a brief detox. It was found in a recent study that limiting your social media usage to only thirty minutes a day can promote better mental health and well being with decreased loneliness and depression.

While most of us can't completely give up social media for good, many of us can greatly benefit from taking time away from it when we can. If you find yourself no longer enjoying social media, constantly comparing your life to the impossibly perfect looking lives of influencers online, you find yourself aggravated more than amused, you scroll without even reading or caring, it has become the first or last thing you do daily, or if you find that it has became your biggest time waster, and therefore the thing holding you back from other experiences in life the most, it may be time to limit yourself. Instead of reaching for the phone or beginning to type the url of your favorite social media site, remind yourself that it isn't going anywhere, social media is here to stay, so it won't hurt to step away and focus on yourself for awhile instead.

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social media
mental health
internet
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tech support