Tag: social networking

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!

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.

Three ways social media can be good for your mental health…I guess….

Despite my own personal obsession with social media, I have written repeatedly about how bad it can be for your mental health. That being said, I remembered something the other day: Social media changed my life in a very important way. It was through someone else’s stupidity, but that still counts!

Allow me to refer to a blog entry last week:

Let me go backwards. Robin Williams completed suicide on August 11, 2014. He had long suffered from a slew of mental health challenges, including depression and substance abuse. However, Williams was suffering from “diffuse Lewy body dementia,”which ultimately contributed heavily to his suicide.

William’s suicide ultimately inspired me to go public with my story. That started when some idiot on Facebook decided to spout off shortly after Williams’ death by saying something along the lines of, “So sad Robin Williams committed suicide. He just needed to pray to Jesus more!”

No, you schmuck, that’s not how it works, and that ignorant comment got me so damn fired up that I wrote an op-ed in my local paper, detailing my own struggles with depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation. That, in turn, set my career in motion in a very different way, making me become much louder about mental health issues. I’ve spoken at events detailing my own struggles, cofounded a mental health caucus, appeared in PSAs and introduced legislation designed to help those who are suffering from mental health challenges. I know that the work I’ve done in this realm has helped people – and I know I have a lot more to do to help more.

As much as I hate to admit it, while thinking of this moment the other day, I realized something: It happened because I was on Facebook at that one specific moment. If I hadn’t been, I would never have had this very positive, life-changing experience. My life would be dramatically worse.

So, even I must admit: Social media can be good for your mental health.

How else can it be helpful? Here’s a few thoughts, but with an important caveat: It all depends on the users. Social media can be good for your mental health, but that only occurs if you are willing to approach it from a certain perspective and/or change your way of thinking.

1) Social support: I firmly believe that social media cannot replace real-world interactions – but that’s not to say that they don’t have a place. Social media can help people feel connected to each other if people join supportive groups, develop healthy relationships and give as much as they take over the course of regular conversations. It can also make it easier to discuss important problems:

A common dilemma among people with mental illness (including depression) is the reluctance to talk to people closest to them about their problems. More and more young people are turning to the Internet for health advice, including topics such as contraception, acne treatments, etc. Far from being a singularly-destructive force in their development, social media can, in fact, do quite the opposite.

This is the opposite of the unrealistic expectations that haunt so many on social media. Instead of making people feel more isolated, it makes them feel more connected – and less alone.

2) You can get closer and learn more about people you’re already friends with: My wife and I have a running joke that, whenever we go to a public event, someone will say something to me about my most recent Facebook post. I try to return the favor whenever possible. Social media – when used to strengthen real world relationships – can be very helpful.

3) You can actually learn something: We’ve all seen it – the political conversation that isn’t really so much a “conversation” as it is “two idiots yelling at each other and accomplishing nothing other than polluting your Facebook wall with their mind garbage.” Social media isn’t always the most conductive place to have a political conversation – but, imagine, for a moment, that you approach a political debate with a different perspective. A willingness to listen and to learn. It is possible to actually learn something from social media debates if you can change your mindset and approach these conversations with an open mind. Maybe you won’t be convinced of someone else’s viewpoint, but hopefully, at least, you can better understand their perspective, and that’s exceptionally important in today’s fragmented society.

As always, I welcome your thoughts. What am I missing here? Let us know in the comments!

Social media is (mostly) terrible for your mental health

Before I was a State Representative, my full time job was to work for the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce.  Among other things, I ran the Chamber’s social media, while also teaching small business owners how to make more money by using Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn.  I used to do presentations on a pretty regular basis, and I’d always joke that, when I first started using Facebook in college, I never thought that I’d be teaching people how to use it to make more money!

Yeah, about that: I also never thought it would make people more depressed, but here we are.

First, a disclaimer: I’m still social media obsessed.  Facebook & Twitter are my two vices, with a side of LinkedIn & Instagram.  That being said, there is ample evidence to show that social media is bad for your mental health.

Here’s what the research shows.

First, social media forces others to make unrealistic comparisons of themselves with others.  I always come back to my first days in college, being stuck in my dorm room, crying, and telling my Dad that I was the only one who felt this miserable.  His response stuck with me: Of course that’s what I thought!  I was literally the only one in my room!  Countless others were in their room, bawling their eyes out, and all I saw were people enjoying themselves.

Likewise, people only upload happy, smiling pictures and their successes to Facebook and Instagram.  News feeds can give you a distorted picture of reality and lead to the impression that everyone is much, much happier than you.  That’s because people only show their successes – not their failures.  But this comparison is terrible for your mental health.

Second, social media can make people depressed. Studies have shown that social networking makes people feel more depressed and have negative effects on self-esteem.  According to this 2017 study, more time on social media is correlated with higher levels of anxiety.  Perhaps most fascinating is this 2016 study:

Users who took a week-long break from the social media site were found to be more satisfied with life and rated their own well-being as higher.

Third, social networking doesn’t necessarily make anyone more social or feel more connected.  According to a study which appeared in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, higher social media use led to increased perceived social isolation:

Young adults with high SMU [social media utilization] seem to feel more socially isolated than their counterparts with lower SMU. Future research should focus on determining directionality and elucidating reasons for these associations.

Oh, and all of this says nothing about cyber bullying, a major problem for today’s youth.

Not for nothing, but the worst network for your mental health?  According to this Time article, Instagram:

While the photo-based platform got points for self-expression and self-identity, it was also associated with high levels of anxiety, depression, bullying and FOMO, or the “fear of missing out.”

The evidence also makes it clear that this affect can be magnified in kids and teenagers, who are still developing their sense of selves and frequently have the greatest issues with self-confidence.

All of this being said, I don’t want to make it sound like social networking is all bad for your mental health.  As the same Time article I cited above notes, there are many positives:

There were certainly some benefits associated with social networking. All of the sites received positive scores for self-identity, self-expression, community building and emotional support, for example. YouTube also got high marks for bringing awareness of other people’s health experiences, for providing access to trustworthy health information and for decreasing respondents’ levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness.

Social networking is a tool: It can be used for good or for bad.  The problem, here, is becoming more apparent: Social media is stunting our social relationships, mental growth and ability to truly connect with each others.  While more research needs to be done, and more time is needed, it truly appears that these communication tools are having the reverse effect that they sought: They are making us more isolated and separated.  Considering their rapid and continued raise, this is a disturbing possibility.