Abstract
Society has shown a constant advancement and evolution throughout the years. With it, comes the increase of many technologies, with our youth being more inclined to use social media apps and sites through said technologies as a form of socialization. Socialization has evolved alongside our society to the point where most only socialize through social media and not as much in person. It can have a wide variety of effects on young adults in terms of mental health, ranging from severe addiction to a way better social list. I decided to implement autoethnographic research methods to better understand how social media truly effects the mental health of an individual, both positively and negatively. What I realized is that, though I gained some slight sense of confidence, an ego boost, and overall better social skills, I slowly became too emotionally invested and enveloped with social media sites that I became addicted. What occurred was a form of toxic positives, where all of the positive mental health effects I gained came coupled with negative ones such as insomnia and depression through addiction. I slowly realized that, if social media is used to cope with socializing difficulties, it should be used in moderation. Social media in moderation is key to sustaining all the positives that comes with social media usage whilst also dodging the potential negatives.
Keywords: Mental Health, Addiction, Toxic Positive, Social Media, Young Adults
Social Media in our Age
Social media has become a very prominent force and influence on the minds of many in society, especially our current generation of youth. Realizing the effects that come from it is a requirement given how often people are latched to their cellular devices and personal computers. I am entirely guilty of being part of this trend of attachment towards technology. In fact, I have been fascinated with technology like video games ever since I was a small child, so enveloping myself in the social media trend was inevitable. Living in the social media age means engaging with others on social media sites, which in turn causes people to feel the many side effects that come from engaging in social media. I write this paper in the form of an autoethnographic essay to better contextualize the side effects of social media and the impacts of living in the social media age.
Social Media’s Side Effects on an Individual
Social media is of course a big influence on our youth, which I am a part of, so I am no different from others who have suffered from an addiction of social media. Personally, I have always been the type of person who cherished their privacy. I would always be what is known as a “lurker” on most websites as I wasn’t particularly fond of engaging in open discussion topics with complete strangers. I kept to myself and never really opened myself up to others on the internet. This is primarily due to my big shift in socializing skills come high school. In the school years prior to high school, I was a very social kid who was willing to engage in long, meaningful conversations. The moment of graduation, however, made me realize that my transfer to a new high school in a different area meant that a lot of my friends would no longer be local ones. Something clicked in my brain, and I found myself not willing to socialize in hopes of meeting new friends. I barely talked to my old ones and always had lingering thoughts on how I would just ruin long-lasting friendships had I tried to make new friends. I found it harder and harder to socialize with others.
Figure 1: An old Discord server that consumed most of my time when I was younger. It is no longer as active and most people have moved on with their lives.
One random day during the summer of 2017, however, something sparked within me. I had been watching a bunch of YouTube videos on a specific genre of video game. I was hooked. I flocked to the YouTube comments and other social media sites to see how others felt on the many videos I watched regarding the topic. I felt inclined to join a Discord community server with many individuals who found the same type of enjoyment that I did from these types of videos. Discord is a gaming-oriented social media site that creates communities and servers to discuss common interests amongst gamers. Soon, I broke the anti-social mold that I formed from my transition to high school and the lurking amongst many social media sites.
Taking the risk of joining a Discord server filled with hundreds of people provided me with a slew of positive benefits, such as more confidence and better socialization skills. As Lawrence Robinson (2021), a senior editor on HelpGuide, a credible mental health site states, social media positively affects you in ways such as “finding new friends and communities” whilst also providing “emotional support during tough times”. My transition to high school saw me more as a quiet, reserved individual, but joining the server really allowed me to actually engage in a conversation with others rather than just give a few head nods with a “yes” or “no” thrown in if asked a question. It allowed me to show my true self to others behind a screen, where it’d be harder to personally affect me emotionally and physically. I gained many acquaintances who I could soon call friends and I found myself slowly becoming happier as an individual. I slowly began becoming more of what I used to be prior to high school.
Such positives of joining the Discord server, however, proved to also be toxic ones, where the many positives provided to me also came bunched up with a whole group of negatives in the form of addiction and its many side effects. I became hopelessly attached to the Discord website. It became common for me to go to pull all-nighters or sleep at an absurd time, waking up in the afternoon to my parent’s disapproval. Though I gained social skills and a confidence boost, I also gained chronic insomnia and depression. For confirmation of such effects, see what Kristeen Cherney, a mental disabilities scholar and freelance writer with a certified PhD provides regarding the effects of social media addiction. As Cherney (2020) states, some of the side effects include “low self-esteem, increased isolation and loneliness, [and] anxiety or depression”. It was a tough hurdle, but eventually I was able to overcome my social media addiction. Though I provide personal evidence onto the toxic positives of social media and the horrors of addiction, let me remind you that this is a very common thing that many teens struggle with throughout their lives and that I am only one of many who have experienced the cruelties of social media.
A Quick Glance at Social Media Side Effects
Such an attachment towards social media sites and applications provides both positives and negatives to the minds of young teenagers and adults. Take a look at Figure 2 that I have provided for you. A sketch of a mental map has been provided that details how social media causes a wide variety of negative and positive side effects to an individual and how it all links together seamlessly. Social media overall, as provided by the mental map, effects a person’s mental health in both positive and negative ways. Further clarity will be provided later on, but many side effects come from the use of social media, such as social networks which better your livelihood and addiction which worsens it.
Figure 2: A Sketch I made of a concept map that details how social media provides differing side effects which all interconnect with each other.
I have acknowledged the many positive side effects of social media and how it can better your lives through social links that reduce stress and increase self-esteem and joy, but I intend on informing you of the complete opposite side of social media and its many side effects. If the usage of social media is not taken in moderation, an addiction can form in which the many positives of social media become toxic negatives that harshly impact one’s life. I am victim of such addiction and intend on providing you with clarity on just how it can affect you. Of course, I have provided insight onto my personal story, but that perhaps is just not enough for you.
I have already provided a credible source from mental disabilities scholar Kristeen Cherney, but further confirmation can be shown to really nail in the point that there are many negatives that come alongside the positives in social media usage. Further confirmation is provided by Fazida Karim, a researcher in social marketing and mental health who has written a scholarly article regarding the topic in which Karim (2020) states that a group in her studies using social media “found a 70% increase in self-reported depressive symptoms among the group”. If it is not blatantly obvious yet, social medias of course provide many, including myself, with a substantial number of positive effects, but they also have been confirmed to come alongside very harsh ones as well.
Figure 3: A graph provided by the Statista Research Department the year 2021 detailing online age groups and their responses to whether or not they feel addicted to social media.
As the Statista Research Department (2021), a group that tracks and provide svarious trends and developments with reliability has provided, over “40 percent of U.S. online users aged 18 to 22 years reported feeling addicted to social media.” Such data truly proves how common it is for people to become addicted to social media. Given the certified sources evidence regarding the negatives of social media, coupled with the overwhelming amount of people in the U.S. who report feeling addicted, it truly is a scary thought knowing just how many people are suffering from the provided effects of social media.
How I’ve Lived in the Social Media Age
Exploring the internet has always been a part of my livelihood ever since I was a small kid. In a sense, I have always been part of the social media age since the moment I was born. I was born into an age where social medias and technologies were already being mass produced and highly developed to the point where my involvement with such things were unavoidable. As I’ve talked of previously, I was a person who lurked on many websites and eventually found myself into a community filled with hundreds of individuals that shared similar interests, all on a social media site known as Discord. It came with many positives, but it also came with the negativity of addiction and its many side effects. Thankfully, I was able to overcome the perils of social media and now I can live a semi-normal life without an addiction looming over my head.
Figure 4: A picture showing how often I would pick up my phone on average per day. My Twitter count reveals just how often I would pick up my phone just for social media engagement.
Some of my ways of overcoming such a frightening addiction were very simple ones. First off, I turned off any and ALL notifications if I planned on working on big projects or when I felt as though I had nothing to do. A lot of my engagement with my smartphone came from receiving notifications from friends, so nullifying such an easy lure that pulls me in to the depths of social media helps a lot in fighting the addiction. I also took a look at how often I would pick up my phone just to use social media sites. If I noticed a number that was way too big, I found myself deleting social media apps for a few days or even weeks. I first notified my friends to not worry them on my silence and then promptly deleted some of my most used social medias such as Discord and Twitter. Even a small break gave me a moment of realization on just how dependent I am on social media. It gave me opportunities to myself, where I could relax and be more active physically. Finally, the last method that helped a lot in recovering from my addiction was putting my phone anywhere away from my bed when going to sleep. A lot of my time engaging in social media apps is in bed at night when all my work is done for the day, which results in hours of rest wasted to social media that makes you feel bad physically the following morning. Social media in moderation is the key that overcame my addiction, and the easy steps I provided really gave me a way of monitoring how often I use such sites and applications.
Figure 5: My Discord privacy & safety settings. I only allow those who are acquainted with my friends and server members in the small servers that I still am a part of.
Though I have retained a lot of my social media skills and confidence gained from becoming a part of a community, I have chosen a more private life in which I really only talk amongst a handful of friends online. I enjoy my fair share of privacy, and as Microsoft researcher and founder of Data & Society danah boyd (2014) has stated, teens are “actively and continuously trying to achieve [privacy] in spite of structural or social barriers that make it difficult to do so” (pp 600). My search of privacy is something I myself choose to seek, even given the difficult circumstances in doing so. My prior experiences using Discord have shown me that it is fairly easy for anyone to access your thoughts and ideas on the internet, with some even manipulating you to say certain things in hopes of screen capping an image that makes you look bad to others.
Concluding Statement
To conclude the essay, though I acknowledge that there are many positives from social media such as social connections and better self-esteem, from personal experience, said positives come packaged neatly alongside toxic negatives that can harshly impact your life. The many positives come alongside the harsh reality of addiction where an individual such as myself becomes hopelessly devoted to a social media site that they may have just picked up. Living in the social media age means engaging in the social media sites, but an overdosage of engagement is not healthy in the slightest. The negatives are very real and verified by legitimate sources, so realizing methods of beating the addiction are necessary to better the lives of many. What is key to overcoming the addiction is moderating your social media access, with easy methods such as muting notifications and putting your phone away when you’re about to sleep. I picked up such methods and was successfully able to overcome my addiction, in which I am proudly more confident in my socialization skills whilst still retaining a group of friends that I don’t check up on every other second.
References
boyd, d. (2015). It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Yale University Press.
Cherney, K. (2020, August 6). Social Media Addiction: What it is and what to do about it. Healthline. Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://www.healthline.com/health/socialmedia-addiction
Karim, F., Oyewande, A. A., Abdalla, L. F., Chaudhry Ehsanullah, R., & Khan, S. (2020, June 15). Social media use and its connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review. Cureus. Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7364393/
Robinson, L. (2022, March 3). Social Media and Mental Health. HelpGuide.org. Retrieved March 11, 2022, from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm#:~:text=The%20positive%20aspects%20of%20social%20media&text=Social%20media%20enables%20you%20to,raise%20awareness%20on%20important%20issues.
Statista Research Department, & 19, O. (2021, October 19). U.S. Social Media Addiction by age group 2019. Statista. Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1081292/social-media-addiction-by-ageusa/#:~:text=Overall%2C%2040%20percent%20of%20U.S.,social%20media%22%20described%2 0them%20completely.
