How social media contributes to depression and isolation?
Introduction to Social Media
Social media refers to the computer-generated tools that can help people in creating, sharing, or exchanging information, pictures, and videos on virtual communities and networks. According to researchers, social media can be defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content" (Kaplan, and Michael 61). Moreover, with the help of social media people can discuss and modify user-generated content. As a result of the introduction, and continuous increase in the use of social media, significant changes to communication between individuals, organizations, and communities have occurred. Social media has helped in bringing the people from different parts of the world closer than ever before in history. Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Instagram are some of the popular social media sites used by people from around the world. Although they have brought people together and have also helped them in finding their old friends, they have also negatively affected the emotion of people.
Positive Impacts of Social Media
Social media can help in maintaining a record of memories and share it with others in the community that is a kind of “lifelogging” (Rainie, and Wellman 286). It can help in learning and exploring new things with the comfort of computer. It can also help in promoting and oneself and telling others about his or her talents and skills. In the same way, it can help in linking people of similar mind. Interaction with other people can also help in increasing creativity that can help in the creation of more interesting contents. This can also help content creators to reach more people. Social media can also help in arranging events and other productive gatherings.
Negative impacts of Social Media
Social media has also been highly criticized for having negative impacts on the lives of people. These negative impacts of social media arise as a result of certain issues related to trustworthiness, reliability of the presented information, concentration of individuals, ownership of the media related content, and different types of interactions among individuals. Most of these problems are related to poor regulation of social network platforms.
Social networking is found to be related to social isolation, depression, insecurity, poor self-esteem, and increased chances of the feelings of envy. It probably depends on the personal reasons of using social media that are involved in the arousal of feelings of depression and isolation.
One of the reasons of the development of depression and isolation is the setting of unrealistic goals. People make friends on social media and think that these friends are actually helpful in their real life. They send them messages and consider that such virtual communication can help them in having relaxing feelings, though it is not the reality.
Effects of social media on social and interpersonal relationships
People spend most of their time on social networking sites resulting in the reduced time that can be spent on productive and relaxing tasks. People have to consider that spending time with their family and friends in the real world is important. It is obvious that strong positive and secure relationships are helpful in having high-levels of self-esteem, feelings of connectedness, resiliency, and decreased depression and anxiety.
Research is continuously showing that people use social media in order to fulfill their social needs, but they are usually disappointed by the results. Lonely people start using internet and social networking sites, so that they would get some form of support from others, but this thing results in the problem in real-life socialization (Marche, theatlantic.com).
It is also obvious that people are less afraid of hurting each other on social media. Therefore, chances of hurting others’ feelings are increased that can affect any person psychologically. Sometimes, friends and other online posts result in the development of stress and anxiety. Social media can also causes the development of feelings of being hacked or being looked by colleagues and other people while using social media that can also causes the person to remain alone and have less social gathering. Increased use of technology has also raised the use of texting that is one of the most important reasons of losing face-to-face communication with others contributing to the feelings of loneliness.
Research has also shown that only direct communication and mutual sharing of messages and information with each other can help in increasing the feelings of connectedness. Whereas, passive use of social media without giving or getting messages from other people is not able to help people in their loneliness (Burke, Robert, and Cameron, n.a.).
Development of social media has also resulted in the development of a sort of addiction, i.e. social media addiction. The more the people use social media, the less they have face-to-face interaction, and the more they have internet addiction and sleep deprivation. Cyberbullying also increases with increased use that is also responsible for loneliness and depression.
Negative impacts of Facebook on the lives of users
Researchers have found that Facebook, popular-most social networking site with over 1.1 billion users from around the world, can develop intense feelings of envy resulting in negative impacts on life satisfaction, especially for passive users. Most envied posts are those which are related to vacations and leisure activities of friends and other users. Similarly, posts of social interactions have more effect on the feelings of isolation and envy as, for example, a person may post different social activities such as those of birthdays and weddings, and his or her friend may feel guilty of having less interactions. Envy on social media sites is different from the envy in the real world. A person may find that his or her friend is receiving more virtual happy birthday wishes on Facebook and feelings of envy may develop, whereas in case of real world, envy is usually developed by looking at the success, possessions, and talent of others.
On social networking sites, people usually try to come with the best, and they keep on making their profiles more attractive. Facebook “friends” are considered as a standard or reference group of popularity for any user resulting in their glorification and admiration. This thing is one of the most important reasons for the development of envy. This phenomenon is known as “envy spiral” by researchers (Krasnova 12).
Facebook can also awake the sense of frustration that is thought to be caused by the sense of “envy”. Another important reason for the development of frustration was the absence of feedback from friends and other users on Facebook. On a further note, people who have the habit of relatively less communication with other and keep on reading the posts of their friends and other users, or check pictures in different posts can have less satisfaction with their own life.
It has also been considered that Facebook came at the time of increasing human loneliness and decreasing social interaction. During this time, Americans are considered to be lonelier as compared to any other time in history. In the year 1950, less than 10% of American households had only one person, but by the year 2010, about 27% of households had just one person. According to Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at NYU, quality of social interaction rather than quantity of social interaction is more important in predicting loneliness. Experts are also of opinion that social media is helpful in providing width of relationships but it is unable to give depth in relationships (Marche, theatlantic.com).
Here, it is important to consider that loneliness and being alone are different things. Solitude or being alone can be interesting and lovely, especially for those who are introverts, but loneliness is a sort of psychological state and is more like other psychological problems such as anxiety, depression, and neuroticism. Feelings of loneliness have increased in the past few decades. In a 2010 AARP study, it was reported that 35% of adults, who are above 45 years of age, feel loneliness as compared to 20% of the similar group only a decade earlier. It has also been reported that nearly 20% of Americans feel unhappy due to the feelings of loneliness. Due to this problem of loneliness, physicians and nurses in the Western world have started to talk openly about the epidemic of loneliness (Marche, theatlantic.com).
Both the conditions of being alone and loneliness are continuously increasing. In the present era, we meet fewer family members and friends. We have fewer occasions of gathering, and if we meet each other, our meetings remain less meaningful and we rarely feel easy. This has resulted in decreased level of quality social connections in the past few decades. People show less confidence on others. In a study, it has been found that in 1985, about 10% of Americans said that they had no one to share their thoughts and important matters, while 15% of Americans said that they had one such friend. However, in 2004, nearly 25% of Americans said that they had no one to share their important or confidential points, while 20% said that they had one such friend or family member. It shows that people with less relationships move towards other sources of connections such as Facebook. Researchers have found that lonely and neurotic people have more chances of spending more time on Facebook as compared to their non-lonely counterparts. They have also found that neurotics have more chances of using the wall, whereas extroverts are more likely to use chatting features along with their wall (Marche, theatlantic.com).
In this time of increasing isolation and loneliness, Facebook has a complicated and sometimes confounding relationship between the loneliness and social networking. Australian research has shown that Facebook users have slightly decreased levels of “social loneliness”, but they have “significantly higher levels of family loneliness”, i.e. the sense of attachment with other people especially friends has slightly decreased, whereas the sense of attachment with members of the family has been significantly decreased. It is probably due to the fact that Facebook encourages more association with people outside of our household and negatively affects the relationship with family members (Marche, theatlantic.com).
Different situations are also affecting the condition of loneliness in different ways. The more the people use different features of a social networking site, the more they have social capital. As for example, if a person keeps on using the “like” button, comment on other people’s posts, and communicate directly, he would have more level of social connection decreasing the feelings of loneliness. This is due to the fact that the person would also receive more messages from others. Furthermore, personalized messages and comments are more helpful in decreasing the feelings of loneliness as compared to likes (Marche, theatlantic.com).
“Facebook Depression”. It has been presented by researchers as the type of depression that develops in preteens and teens after spending a lot of time in front of Facebook. The preadolescents and adolescents can also develop the problem of Facebook depression. This depression can be developed as a result of romantic and other flirting activities, perceived friendship quality, and excessive chatting. Researchers have reported that this depression can result in the increased use of risky internet sites and blogs, thereby increasing the chances of aggressiveness, substance abuse, and unsafe sexual practices (O'Keeffe, Gwenn, and Kathleen 802).
Concluding Remarks
Use of social networking sites has become one of the most commonly used activities of people in the present world. These sites have been developed to provide some forms of communication and entertainment, and the popularity of these websites is continuously increasing. On the other hand, these sites have also resulted in increased levels of loneliness and depression in people. People feel lonely and depressed after using social networking sites because these sites are not able to bring real closeness and intimacy. These sites can only give the illusion of decreased distance and intimacy. This decreased interaction in reality results in decreased confidence on people resulting in decreased sharing of inner thoughts. This results in the silence that can increase the level of anxiety and depression. In the same way, thinking of Facebook as an important source of social connection is decreasing with time as more people are developing low self-esteem through social media. Moreover, this feeling of lowered self-esteem increases with increased use of social networking sites. It can be concluded that social networking sites are used worldwide and they can result in a universalized feeling of envy, lower self-esteem, depression and loneliness, so there must be a proper check on the use of social media.
Works Cited
Burke, Moira, Robert Kraut, and Cameron Marlow. "Social capital on Facebook: Differentiating uses and users." Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 2011.
Kaplan, Andreas M., and Michael Haenlein. "Users of the world, unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media." Business horizons 53.1 (2010): 59-68.
Krasnova, Hanna, et al. "Envy on Facebook: A hidden threat to users’ life satisfaction?." (2013).
Marche, Stephen. “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?”. theAtlantic. The Atlantic, May 2012. Web. 08 Dec. 2014.
O'Keeffe, Gwenn Schurgin, and Kathleen Clarke-Pearson. "The impact of social media on children, adolescents, and families." Pediatrics 127.4 (2011): 800-804.
Rainie, L., and B. Wellman. Networked: The New Social Operating System. MIT Press, 2012. Print.
