7 Facts about Depression Caused by Social Media
Probably social media was not meant to be what it has become today, but nonetheless it controls our lives today in more ways than one. More or less, each and every one of us today is hooked on to some social networking site or the other. Social media has been beneficial, no doubt. It has brought people closer, it has made contacting people easier, it has even made news and knowledge about current affairs more accessible to us, but somewhere along the way, it also took away our peace of mind and made us obsessive about living lives that everyone we know or not should admire. The zeal to come across as ‘cool’ on social network websites is the new struggle and genuineness has silently taken a backseat. Did you know that this kind of an outlook also results in clinical depression? People today are falling prey to the ill-effects of social media so badly that they are suffering from depression. Listed here are 7 facts about depression caused by social media which you should know.
1. Using social media stirs up many emotions in us – the negatives of which can lead to social media depression. We are constantly bombarded with updates about the various fascinating things happening in our friends’ lives compared to which our lives seem too dull and non-happening. So when we see a friend traveling half the world on what seems like an endless world tour and another having a great time with her boyfriend, we end up contemplating if we really are living our lives. Social media can, at the same time, also make us feel good if we get good comments on our own updates and when someone wishes us on our birthday or for some achievement we made.
2. Social media depression arises because we subconsciously compare our lives with those whose snippets we see online. Social media websites can be very misleading because we see only what someone chooses to share. Think about it yourself – you would choose to share only the most interesting and good aspects of your life on social media and leave out the not-so-good ones. The same is true for everybody else – they are all keeping the not-so-good aspects of their lives hidden away.
3. Social media has not yet been professionally accepted as a term for a mental disorder. Though it still does not appear in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders – the official book that records the names of all mental disorders known, social media depression is a very real thing affecting teenagers and even adults today.
4. It has been found that social media websites can adversely affect the mental health of some people. Whether this affects some people or only those who are naturally prone to feel depressed are affected by it is not fully known yet, but it is known for sure that using internet psychologically affects some people. Research has shown that children and teenagers are more susceptible to this kind of depression and that women are more likely to be affected by it than men.
