Social media and your mental health

By Dina Halaseh
Educational Psychologist

Whether we like it or not, we live in a world full of digital interfaces and technology. In many instances, digital distractions seem to pop up even when we don’t want them to! We all grew up with minimal technology, but we can now see a new generation so caught up in the web of tech that has been officially classified as an addiction.

Are distractions stealing your attention?

Digital distractions have a considerable effect on many neural networks, including attention. Having our smartphones constantly near inhibits our ability to stay focused. Whether it’s the alerts themselves, the sensation that we need to keep checking our phones, or even if we don’t check, our brain is kept engaged with the phone and gets distracted from any task at hand.

Social media shortening our attention span

Research shows that dopamine (the feel-good chemical in our brain) is triggered when we receive cues such as ”likes” or comments on our social media platforms, decreasing our motivation to pay attention to anything other than our phones. Each time we check our phone, we technically break our concentration and have to start from scratch!

This does not mean that the whole usage of social media and phone consumption is bad. Like with food excess causing health problems and weight gain, too much social media can be bad for you and your health.

What’s a healthy amount?

Limiting our exposure to social media to about 30 minutes per day may significantly improve our wellbeing, reducing feelings of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and the fear of missing out (FOMO). FOMO is social anxiety stemming from the belief that others might be having fun without you.

The idea is to be mindful of how we use social media and how it affects our lives. It’s normal to keep track of loved ones and social events, but you need to make sure not to monitor social media for all the things you might be missing out on or how others have it better than you. Remember, the grass is always greener on social media.

Why are you checking social media?

Sometimes we all need to be insightful and find out why we’re checking social media. Are we trying to replace something with it? Something that we can be doing in real life? Being mindful of our reasons behind social media can help us understand if we are masking a real need with some time on social media. Sometimes the need is to be around friends and loved ones and social media becomes the replacement. Other times it’s much more complicated. There might be a healthier way to satisfy those needs than through social media.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine