Category: Social Media

Yeah…TikTok has real mental health benefits

After years of feeling and acting like an old man, I am finally bowing down to the inevitable social media crazy…let’s talk TikTok.

For the uninitiated, TikTok is a video platform. You can create short, snappy videos – as long as three minutes but usually a minute or less – that are chock-full of original content, voiceovers, graphics, text, high-quality editing, and more. The platform has become huge of late. Consider:

  • TikTok now has over one billion monthly users – 130 million of those are in the United States.
  • TikTok has been downloaded more than 2.6 billion times.
  • 32.5% of TikTok users are 10-19…meaning that tens of millions of literal kids are using the app.
  • Users spend an average of 52 minutes a day on the platform.

So, if you’ve read my blog before, you’ve heard me rail about the evils of social media and mental health…like, literally folks, I did it last week. At the same time, we’ve got to take a more nuanced view of social media, because there is no question that it can also have its mental health benefits.

And that brings me back to TikTok.

TikTok’s user base is skewed young, and this means that there is ample opportunity to communicate with this demographic – a demographic that unquestionably needs help and resources when it comes to mental health. It also presents amazing opportunities for people of this age group because it gives us a chance to speak their language.

As noted by USA Today, TikTok is providing mental health tips and tools to users like never before. Individuals are sharing their experiences in therapy and what they learned from it. Therapists are giving out bite-sized pieces of advice on the app. And people are destigmatizing the issue by sharing their personal story’s.

TikTok, to their credit, seems to be taking their potential role seriously. The app has started to unveil mental health and suicide prevention resources for people who use certain search terms, like suicide.

Here are some examples of great TikTok users when it comes to mental health:

@livpoland_

#suicideawarwness #yourenotalone #depresion #anxiety #ptsd #cptsd #iloveyou #mentalhealth #trauma #advocate

♬ Heal – Tom Odell

@calladinecreativeco

#mentalhealthmatters

♬ original sound – Sarah Cothran

@amoderntherapist

Who can relate? #mentalhealth #tiktoktherapist #foryou

♬ i feel like shh – holly 🦄🌟💕

Now, that being said, it’s not all roses. TikTok has some extremely toxic users: Their algorithms encourage like-minded videos, and within a few short hours, someone can go from transphobic or fake science content to literal Nazis. Its short videos can further degrade our already eroded attention span. The app has also been accused in the past of culling its algorithms to keep content from disabled individuals suppressed.

So, what’s the conclusion? Duh…I’m not qualified to give it. I do think TikTok has real mental health potential, however. There’s a lot of good people on the app. I just think that you, as a parent, have to be engaged in how your teen uses internet content. Make sure to give them the education they need to independently evaluate such content and do what you can to monitor their social media use and ensure that it is being done in a responsible manner.

As always…help. I welcome your thoughts. In fact, we need them! What do you think, and what can we do, as adults to make TikTok better for our kids? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below!

How can you make social media good for your teen?

Many of you may have seen the report two weeks ago, and it was pretty damning: According to their own research, Facebook became aware that Instagram is bad for the mental health of their teenage users – and particularly teenage girls – and has done nothing about it. Facebook has denied that this is the case, but the allegation certainly lines up with other research, which has shown that Instagram may be the worst social network when it comes to self-esteem, body image, and mental health.

None of this should shock anyone who pays attention to the interaction of social networking and mental illness. Indeed, research has shown that Instagram negatively impacts depression, anxiety, self esteem, bullying, body image, and more. No one who has paid attention to these areas should be surprised by this. 

I type this one as someone who pays attention both to mental health and as a parent of a ten and eight year old who have their own “phones” (old hand-me-downs that only work in the house). My kids use Facebook messenger, and my wife and I obviously stay on top of it, managing who they talk to and how often they use their phones. That won’t be that way forever though. One day, they are gonna have Instagram and Facebook profile and who knows what else. Social media is far too ingrained in our society for banning our kids to be an option. I don’t think that’s realistic.

But…what can parents do? How can we manage our kid social media use and try to start the conversation early?

A few thoughts.

Start the conversation about what social media really is when they are young

If your kids are like mine, odds are that they have seen you use social media at some point, or at least seen you scrolling through your phone and make a post. As soon as they can comprehend it, explain what social media is, but do so honestly: Explain its benefits, the reasons you use it – but also its downfalls. Set that stage early: Tell your kids that people use social media to post a polished, curated version of your life. This helps them understand what social media is, and what it isn’t.

As an aside, don’t use social media that way. Show your flaws, warts and all. People appreciate a real version of you much more than an air-brushed one.

And, one more aside: When your kids get old enough, ask their permission before making a post with them in it. I always do.

Create expectations of parental engagement

Make sure that your kids know – particularly when they are young – that you will have access to their social media and to what they use it for. When they are really little, you may have access to their conversations or the media that they send to each other (I have that for my kids who use Messenger). Obviously, you respect their privacy more and more as they get older but make sure your kids know that you will watch their social media use – and provide guidance/answer questions accordingly. Don’t do it from a “big brother” perspective. Do it from the perspective of making sure you can provide guidance and answer important questions for your kids. 

Encourage real world relationships

Look, social media is great and all, but at the end of the day, all of us – our kids and ourselves – need to get the hell outside. Encourage your kids to look at social media for what it should be: A supplement to their real-world activities. A compliment. Not a substitution. Don’t let them just stare at their phones. Make them get out and interact in the real world. 

Talk about their feelings and encourage them to think about them

Social media use may be inevitable, but healthy social media use is still possible. Encourage your kids to be emotionally reflective as they use social media. Ask them how their social media use makes them feel, and have them challenge themselves about why they feel a certain way, while also being open to having a conversation with them about their feelings. This encourages self-reflection, and if approached right, may encourage a teen to moderate their own behavior or relationships. FOMO – fear of missing out – can be defeated with a conversation. Fear of not looking a certain way on Instagram can be knocked down by a reminder about filters. 

Anyway, those are my thoughts – as always, I defer to you! What am I missing? What else should we be talking about with our kids? Let me know in the comments!

Doom Scrolling: What It Is and Why It’s So Dangerous

I think it was at the height of the George Floyd riots (not protests, riots, and I do mean those two differently) that it really hit me. Dozens of cities were burning across the nation, the fire started by the murder of George Floyd. The kids were in bed, and I could not stop looking at Twitter, loading new tweets, reporting whatever horrendously depressing piece of information I learned to my wife, and then letting the cycle repeat itself over and over and over again.

I slept like crap that night. And for the next three.

Finally, at some point, it hit me: What the hell was I doing? Yes, staying informed is important, but this was insane. No good came of me cycling over and over through the battlefield that our news had become. Twitter was horrendous. Facebook was toxic. I needed to put down the damn phone.

I was Doom Scrolling.

Doom Scrolling is when you are staring at your phone, refreshing a social media feed, consciously or subconsciously looking for more bad news. It usually happens late at night, when you turn on your phone to unwind and relax…and instead become convinced that the world is on fire and that you will never get a peaceful night’s sleep again.

Looking at your iPhone late at night is bad enough for your ability to get some sleep, but Doom Scrolling is pretty much the worst thing you can do with your phone before bed, short of trying to eat the damn thing. But the problem with Doom Scrolling is what it does to your mind: It excites it, it terrifies it, it makes you feel sad and afraid. It also revs up your mind at a time you are trying to slow it down and get some rest.

All of these emotions are obviously not conducive to getting a decent night of sleep, and in turn, you wake up feeling sad, anxious, and depressed. This can turn into a bitter cycle.

Stopping Doom Scrolling is important to your mental health. It is difficult, but we have to find a way to do it.

How? Some thoughts.

  • Physically separate from your phone: Yes, that. It can be hard. It may make you twitch. But put your phone somewhere else. Charge it on the other side of the room. Give it to a supportive partner (who probably hates how much time you spend on it, anyway). Set a hard stop: No more phone use after Xpm. Just…go away from it.
  • Monitor your social media habits otherwise: Doom Scrolling happens because we have developed habits that push us towards using our phones anyway. Doom Scrolling is easier to stop when we monitor our social habits to begin with, then avoid staring at our phones at a moment where our minds are already primed to look for the bad news. We all know what it’s like – disappearing down the Scroll Hole. Looking at your phone for so long that you forgot why you started to begin with. Don’t be that person. Develop the habits to stop looking at your phone so much to begin with.
  • Set a time limit: Say you really do want to look at your phone and watch for the news. Maybe you, like me, enjoy being plugged into society and find value in it. That is a totally understandable reflex, and our phones have been unquestionably helpful at building a more connected world…indeed, many of us never would have become as a way of the problems people of color face at the hands of elements of law enforcement, to begin with, were it not for our phones. So, allow yourself ten minutes. Physically set a timer. Scroll for ten. And when your phone rings, be done.

You’ll notice a theme: Some of the pieces of advice that I give are more physical than psychological. That’s because Doom Scrolling is a reaction to the terror around us. I’ve repeatedly tried to note that individual psychology cannot be separated from the real world, and at moments of terror or anxiety, we all become depressed. Our phones just give that an outlet, hence the Doom Scrolling.

And one more thing. Don’t berate yourself for Doom Scrolling. It happens, and it’s okay. You’re not weak. You’re human and normal. We all want to feel connected, even to a world that feels broken. For better or for worse, our phones give us that opportunity.

How much is Doom Scrolling an issue for you? Have you found any tricks that can help you stop it? Let us know in the comments!

EDIT: More Resources! Here is a great article on the topic from Choosing Therapy.

The Availability Heuristic and You

Alright, you’ve read this blog before, right? So, what do I hate more than almost anything else, despite the fact that I just can’t stop checking it? Yes, social media. I’ve written over and over and over about how evil it is and how much harm it can cause and blah, blah, blah…

(Okay, yes, I know it isn’t necessarily THAT bad, and that it does have many positive benefits, but people should use it with caution)

Anyway, I had an interesting conversation the other day about how terrible things are in the world and how all it seems like you hear is bad news. My friend and I were discussing this, and he specifically mentioned the Availability Heuristic.

For those of you who didn’t take Psych 101, in the most simple terms possible, the Availability Heuristic is the notion that what you see is what you get. Your mind, when thinking of things, thinks of the loudest or most recent things that it sees.

And this, in turn, can really lead to depression. Particularly in a social media-heavy world.

Think about it: You sign onto social media, and what do you see? TRUMP SETS THINGS ON FIRE! DEMOCRATS SET BABIES ON FIRE!

I mean, I’m kidding…a little. But as you scroll, you get more and more depressed. We’re exposed to a good chunk of statistics and information that other generations couldn’t even fathom. This can warp our perception of the world and alter our moods and feelings.

Given the reality of the Availability Heuristic, I am convinced that this is part of why we have so much trouble in the universe today. We see and think of things that are only immediately available and memorable. And that’s the bad news.

I mention this because I think this is an interesting way of framing the conversation of social media. There’s a set, cognitive bias for why we think and feel the way we do, and the better we understand this, the more sense all of our minds will make. Remember, it’s not just you. Cognitive biases like these exist to poke us in the head and make us see things a certain way. They have their evolutionary benefits to be sure, but sometimes, they can run amok.

So, short of throwing your phone out the window, what can you do if you do find yourself getting depressed by the evening news and your Twitter feed? Remind yourself of this fundamental truth: The bad news is sticking in your brain more than the good. This is normal – even healthy to an extent – but it isn’t as bad as it seems.

I’m just gonna try to make you smile for a second: Here are seven subreddits you should look at

Does the internet help with depression in the long term? Social media definitely doesn’t.

But, that’s not to say that all social media is evil. Some of it is downright wonderful.

One of the most popular social media/internet forums is Reddit. Reddit, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the longest running internet communities of…anything. And I mean anything.

For those of you who want more info, this video is a good starting point:

Reddit is made up of a series of topic discussion boards, called subreddits, that are organized around certain topics.

Now, just to be clear, like all forms of the internet, Reddit can be absolutely, positively terrible. It’s comment can be insanely abusive and it’s sleuthing “abilities” have led mobs on wild vigilante quests. Thankfully, most of these uses are rare, and if you stick to the right subreddits, you can find some amazing content, guaranteed to make you smile.

So, even if you don’t have a Reddit account (you don’t need one), here are seven subreddits which will absolutely bring a smile to your face.

  1. BeforeNAfterAdoption: Pictures of kitties, puppies and the like, before they are adopted and after. They go from beaten and beaten down to happy and playful.
  2. Aww: It’s just cute things. It’s just cute, cuddly things that will make you go AWWWWWWW.
  3. DadReflexes: If you’re a Dad (or Mom, let’s be real), you know the meaning of this phrase – you get so good at watching your kid that you reflexively can move to keep them out of trouble. These are videos and GIFs which show prime examples of Dad Reflexess saving their kids from trouble.
  4. AnimalsBeingBros: Sounds like you need some more cute animal videos! Here’s animals being friends with each other. Wish humans could get along this well.
  5. Funny: Arguably the most self-descriptive subreddit name ever. Also, yes, it really is funny.
  6. PhotoshopBattles: People will upload great pictures for the purpose of being photoshopped into amazing situations. Examples include cats being kicked in the face by other cats, police officers with two foot differences between them, and more. Words aren’t going to do it justice. Go look!
  7. UpliftingNews: The news is terribly depressing. Here’s a thread of amazing, wonderful news which shows that maybe the world isn’t going to hell in a hand basket at quite the speed it seems like it is.

Any other good subreddits to share? Let us know in the comments below!

 

Two major mental health trends, with one unifying theme

Two articles jumped out at me over this weekend. The first was this extremely long and in-depth look at a major suicide study done decades ago, which showed that even the occasional letter from a therapist can get someone through a crisis and significantly reduce suicide rates. The second touches on the topic you’ve all heard me discuss many times before: The rise of depression and suicide in young adults, and the potential role that smart phones may play.

The commonality here is obvious: The importance of relationships in stopping a mental health crisis and maintaining happy lives.

The Huffington Post article tracks the work of Dr. Jerome Motto, who engaged in a massive suicide study. His team tracked tracked mentally ill patients and found that sending letters to them could dramatically reduce suicide attempts, a study that, according to the article, has been backed up by other, similar studies, including this one by Gregory Carter:

Gregory Carter, who ran a psychiatry service in New South Wales, Australia, orchestrated a study in which Motto’s words were typed onto a postcard illustrated with a cartoon dog clutching an envelope in its mouth. The notes were sent eight times over the course of 12 months to patients who were among the hardest to treat. The majority had histories of trauma, including rape and molestation. Some had made repeated suicide attempts. But Carter found there was a 50 percent reduction in attempts by those who received the postcards. When he checked in on the study’s participants five years later, the letters’ effects were still strong. And the cost per patient was a little over $11.

Meanwhile, the USA Today article I noted above places at least some of the blame of the rise in depression among teenagers and young adults on cell phones:

San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge sees a direct link between how much time teens spend on smartphones and troubling signs of mental health distress.

In her 2017 book “iGen,” she cited national health surveys and other statistics to argue that a generation of teens have turned to smartphones as their preferred social outlet, and teens who spend the most time on their screens are more likely to be unhappy.

“What you get is a fundamental shift in how teens spend their leisure time,” Twenge told USA TODAY. “They are spending less time sleeping, less time with their friends face to face. … It is not something that happened to their parents. It is not something that happens as a world event.”

There’s a common connection here, and it’s pretty obvious: People – all of us – need each other.

The simple fact is this: iPhones and social media are build on the premise of building a further connection between people, and while that’s certainly possible, I’d argue that they really just keep us apart. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone else, but when we use our phones instead of talking to people face to face, we’re not building anything. It may increase our surface knowledge of someone’s life, but it’s not a substitute for a real interaction. It’s like heaving sugar for dinner instead of a healthy meal – it may fill you up, but there’s nutritious about what you are eating, and eventually, it rots you from the inside.

The article about sending letters to suicidal people backs up this point, in my opinion. People can, apparently, be brought back from the brink by hearing from someone who truly cares. I will not presume to imagine what is going through the mind of someone who is at the point of a suicide attempt. But from what I’ve read – and what I’ve experienced when I was close to that point – suicide isn’t really about dying, per se. It’s about someone wanting to stop their pain. To know that they have a reason to hope. So, if you get an authentic person sending a real message – hey, how are you doing, I’m thinking about you and I care about you – can that fill a void? Can that bring a person back from the edge? Dr. Motto’s research, and that of others, would certainly seem to imply that the answer to that question is yes.

It seems to me that these two articles detailing the rise in suicide and depression have someone in common – humans are losing their innate ability to connect with others, and doing so can solve many of our mental health issues.

As always, I welcome your thoughts. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Does social media cause depression?

Despite being a complete social media addict (sigh), I’ve written repeatedly about the negative impacts that social media can have on your mental health. However, one of the key, unanswered questions has always been this: Is the relationship casual? That is, does social media use cause loneliness, does loneliness cause an increase in social media use, or is a third item related to both?

New research indicates that the relationship IS casual: Social media use does, in fact, make you more lonely.

This comes from a new study, courtesy of Melissa Hunt, the associate director of clinical training at the University of Pennsylvania’s Psychology Department.

In her study, Hunt took two groups of college students. In the first, students were asked to use social media as they usually did (about an hour a day). The second group was asked to limit it’s social media use to ten minutes per site.

The results, per Hunt: “The main finding of the paper is that limiting your use of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram to 30 minutes total or less per day results in reductions in depression and loneliness, especially for people who were moderately depressed to start with.”

Yikes.

Yikes yikes yikes.

This is the first study, to my knowledge, which directly shows that social media is a CAUSE of depression, not just correlated with it. However, I can’t say I’m particularly surprised by this. We know that excessive use of social media can create a variety of negative impacts on someone’s life, including cyberbullying, negative body image and more. However, this is the first time that there has been a direct casual link established between depression and social media.

What do we do? Well, that’s easy: Use social media less. Seriously. It’s good for you to do that anyway, even if this study isn’t accurate (though I intuitively think it is).

More research is needed, but I firmly believe that this study will be the first of many, many which show the devastating impacts which social media is having on our society and our culture. And it’s hard for me to say: Like many of you, I find myself completely addicted to social media. But it’s an addiction which needs to break.

 

Using Facebook to diagnosis depression

I came across this article in Medical News Today, which reviews a study done in the medical journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To make a long story short, the study reviews Facebook data and medical records, analyzing information posted by the more than 100 people who had been diagnosed with depression.

While there is ample evidence that social media can be a cause of depression (I have written about the topic before), this is the first time that I have ever seen published information which notes that social media can be used as a diagnosis tool for depression. That has some pretty interesting implications.

First, the study itself. Here’s one of the most important parts:

The scientists fed the information into an algorithm. In total, Eichstaedt [author of teh study] and colleagues analyzed 524,292 Facebook status updates from both people who had a history of depression and from those who did not.

By modeling conversations on 200 topics, the researchers determined a range of so-called depression-associated language markers, which depicted emotional and cognitive cues, including “sadness, loneliness, hostility, rumination, and increased self-reference” — that is an increased use of first-person pronouns, such as “I” or “me.”

The researchers found that the linguistic markers could predict depression with “significant” accuracy up to 3 months before the person receives a formal diagnosis.

Here’s a look at what words can be used to predict depression (none of this will be a surprise):

F4.large

Also notable is that more self-referential language is found more often in people with depression. That’s not really a surprise, as depression and narcissism are often linked.

To be perfectly honest, none of the above should be very surprising. Extended use of terms that indicate pain, distress or rumination would obviously indicate someone who is in a crisis. What is interesting, however, is that you can actually use these terms on social media to predictably and reliably diagnosis depression. That, to me, is fascinating. It is yet another tool in the toolbox for diagnosis depression, and as numerous studies have shown, depression remains massively under diagnosed, with some estimates showing that up to 2/3 of all individuals with depression are undiagnosed.

New study links social media and depression

I’ve written about it before, and now there is even more proof: A new study has linked social media and depression

I caught this article in Forbes, which notes:

The team calculated that for every 10% rise in negative social media interactions a person experienced, their risk of depression rose significantly—by 20%. For every 10% rise in positive experience, risk for depression fell by 4%; but this association was not statistically significant, meaning it could have been due to chance.

Lovely. In other words, negative experiences on social media can make us depressed, and they far outweigh the positive ones. Why? According to the conclusion of the study, this is because of “negativity bias” – meaning that people are more likely to remember and feel negative experiences, rather than positive ones.

I don’t need to go on too long of a rant, I think, about the serious dangers of social media when it comes to our fragile mental health. The connection is clear, albeit not in a causational way just yet (there needs to be more research to determine if people who are prone to depression are more likely to use social media, if social media really does make people depressed or if there is a third factor linking the two).

That being said, I think it is extremely clear that social media and technology, for all their strengths, can have an absolutely devastating impact on our mental health. I legitimately wonder if, decades from now, we’re going to look back on this period as a turning point in our society, one where we first truly began to deal with the psychological dangers of society, or continued to allow it to eat us alive.

I’m pretty young – only 35 – so it’s not as if I have the memory or expertise to analyze how each technological impact benefited and hurt society. I suspect that the answer is both. However, I think that the reason that these changes seem so much more pronounced and ubiquitous is because the technology has evolved too. Phones never leave our side – they are often the first and last things we touch during the day, and we spend hours staring at their tiny screens, searching for connection and fulfillment that will never really come. They are everywhere, and so is their impact.

That, I think, is why these changes seem so much more widepsread. Rates of depression and suicide are both increasing dramatically, and there is ample evidence which indicates that phone use and social media is playing a role. We need to do more about this issue. What that means, I don’t know yet, but I want to find out.

Sigh. End rant. I miss anything? Anything you want to add? Give us your thoughts in the comments below!

The language of suicide, and why it matters

As you may have noticed, whenever I discuss suicide on this blog, I’m always very careful on how I phrase it, although researching this blog entry has made me realize that I’ve been messing this up to. There are words and phrases you should and should not use when describing suicide – here’s a quick overview about some best practices.

Why “committed suicide” is bad

This one is more obvious and stigma oriented. Simply put, “committed” is used to describe a crime. Someone committed a murder. They committed a robbery.

Committed, in this context, is usually associated with a moral judgement, and that’s not a way that any of us want to describe suicide. Suicide and mental illness shouldn’t be associated with a moral failing. Doing so can make people who suffer feel weak or ashamed, and that can serve to increase the stigma that surrounds both mental illness. The language we use should encourage others to seek help, not drive them into a closet of fear and shame.

Why “completed suicide” is also bad

This is the phrase I’d always used – I viewed it as preferable – but this is a really good point:

Think of the sense of accomplishment you feel when you complete a big project. Then think of the disappointment you feel when you don’t.

Completion is good, and suicide isn’t.

To complete something conveys success; to leave something incomplete conveys failure.

Indeed, we do associate completion with success, and no one’s suicide should be viewed as a success. So, there must be something else.

The alternatives

I think the AP is on track when it comes to these alternatives. The phrases used here are preferable, in that they are accurate and avoid the moral connotations that comes with “completed” and “committed.”

Language matters. Words matter. We know that the way we describe an action can unintentionally pass judgement over the action and can increase or decrease the stigma that comes with it. All of us have an obligation to be careful in the way we talk, and I’m going to be better at this from now on.

And one more thing: In our society, there’s been a backlash against being “politically correct” when it comes to how we describe things. My experience has been that this backlash is more orientated around being a decent and non-racist person, but that’s besides the point.

The way we discuss suicide has nothing to do with political correctness. It has everything to do with creating an environment that makes people feel safe, that supports (rather than harms) their mental health, and that can increase the odds of someone seeking help instead of ending their life.

Any thoughts you want to add? Any other language recommendations? I’d love to hear them – please let us know your thoughts in the comments!