Social Media. Do We Need It?
by S4B0T4G3FIRE | April 24, 2019, 8:00 AM EST
Social media is so enticing to us all. In real time, social media lets us access breaking news, keep up with our favorite celebrities, share our interests and passions with our peers, and make special announcements to the world. However, not all of its features are as beneficial as these; in fact, many aspects of social media are rather destructive to our lives. Mental health issues, lowered self-esteem, and addiction are among the many side effects of everyday social media use. In this article, not only will I explain the extent to which social media is compromising our physical and mental health, but I will also seek to conclude if we really need social media in our lives…or if we are better off without it.
Part 1: Problems Caused by Social Media
Problem 1: Mental Health Issues
If you are active on social media, it is extremely likely that you are surrounding yourself with people who are “putting on an act” to appear more positive, interesting, and exciting. You may even be trying to mimic their efforts in order to boost your own image. In fact, pretty much everyone on social media does this to a certain extent by hiding all of their negativity and baggage behind closed doors (naturally, of course, because no one wants to be burdened by others’ problems). Though, some of us who are guilty of this actually believe that everyone else’s lives are actually more interesting and exciting and stress-free than our own, just because we do not see their negativity or baggage.
Why? Well… firsthand, we experience family emergencies, debt, stress, harassment, disapproval, and countless other real-world problems every single day. Since no one on social media openly brags about having such issues, we simply assume that such issues do not plague them the same way they plague us. As a result, we convince ourselves that our lives “suck” (sounds a bit harsh, but it is true for some people), even though our friends and role models, despite not sharing any of it, experience many of the exact same issues we do.
Sooner rather than later, we need to remind ourselves that social media is not at all representative of the real world. “Perfect lives” do not exist. Everyone has baggage that we will rarely (if ever) see shared on social media. If we can understand this, we can avoid feeling isolated…and then prevent ourselves from unnecessarily spiraling into a life of depression and anxiety.
Furthermore, we must also stop comparing our lives to those of other people. Our immediate instinct upon seeing an image of someone is to compare and contrast their lives (facial features, body type, clothing, and talent) to our own, but the success of others has no bearing whatsoever on our own lives. While it is healthy to have a role model whom we strive to be like, we need to learn to accept our own lives first. Jealousy is not going to make us look muscular/slim or earn us a big house with a swimming pool or take us on a dream vacation. As such, jealousy should not initiate our goal to look or act a certain way. There are many paths that we can take to achieve our goals, but the ones of success do not strive on jealousy.
Problem 2: Harassment-Induced Lowered Self-Esteem
In recent years, billions of people have armed themselves with a new class of weaponry: smartphones. With these millimeter-thick sheets of glass, we are free to write negatively about any person or organization in the world, knowing that, without facing any consequences whatsoever, we can destroy someone’s virtual self-esteem at the risk of inadvertently destroying their real feelings.
Harassment creates an extremely unfriendly environment for all users of social media. It inclines us to expect the worst from people and be hostile toward them. Instead of engaging in conversation and debate, we either become really offensive/defensive/antisocial at first impression, or we simply refrain from sharing our perspective altogether; but it is wrong to fear expressing ourselves on social media because (obviously) not everyone on social media is hateful. In fact, the majority of us are friendly and want to share our opinions, but it is important to note that there are still enough hateful people on these platforms who cause us to withhold our trust. As the saying goes, “One bad apple spoils the whole bunch.”
To those bad apples, I emphasize how important it is to keep in mind that genuine social media users are not some virtual, emotionless, abstract robots. They are human beings with real minds and real hearts, both of which are vulnerable and susceptible to deep feelings of happiness, sadness, and anger. Words can (and often do) “cut deep,” so we must use caution when posting/replying to someone on social media, just as we would if we were speaking to them face-to-face. Just because there will be no consequences for our actions on social media, we must not exercise the “right” to harass others on social media. Furthermore, we must not accuse victims of being “snowflakes” for taking offense to our harassment. “Blaming the victim.” Just the mere thought of that is so silly!
Problem 3: Addiction
With celebrities being as “successful” as they are, we love to obsess over how “interesting, entertaining, fun, and worthy of our attention” their lives are; and with our friends and followers being as important to us as they are, we love to obsess over how fun it is to talk to them. Frankly, we as consumers are spoiled by the convenience of entertainment, information, and socialization that we often manage to over-immerse ourselves in it.
The key word here is “obsess.” We are so anxious to know everything about everyone at all times. If ignorance fills our minds, even just for a moment, curiosity and worry get the best of us until we refresh our minds with new, current information. As a result, we allow social media to take up much of our free time until it practically replaces our work, sports, hobbies, and relationships. Nowadays, we are seemingly incapable of living without our smartphones nearby at all times.
Just received an ‘A’ on an exam? Time to go seek the approval of random people on social media! Just got into a car accident? Time to demand sympathy from random people on social media! Just got proposed to by your high school sweetheart? Time to seek congratulations from random people on social media! Events that we used to be able to enjoy or endure in the company of our closest friends and family, we now almost immediately run to social media to share with people we do not even know! You can argue that there is nothing wrong with this (with which I would agree), but the point here is that we lack intimacy. Our audience is now an anonymous crowd, and its approval/disapproval of us drives our entire lives.
Furthermore, apart from detracting from the intimacy of our lives, addiction to social media physically affects us in a variety of latent ways. For instance, it causes fatigue (lack of sleep), laziness (lack of exercise, proper communication skills, etc.), distraction from important daily tasks (ignorantly and selfishly scrolling through messages while operating motor vehicles, because our curiosity is “more important than ensuring the safe travel of ourselves and others”), and even eye problems later in life (due to extensive exposure to displays, especially before bed). The list goes on. Social media might be okay to use in certain environments and in moderation with other activities and tasks, but we need to learn when to get offline and stay offline before we begin to permanently ruin our lives.
Part 2: Do We Need Social Media?
The Study
Now that the unintended, yet destructive, aspects of social media have been identified, we can discuss just how destructive they really are.
Essentially, I conducted a sort of “study” (on myself and my behavior) to see how much I rely on social media in my everyday routine, and how deeply social media use has been etched into my muscle memory. For four (4) weeks, I deprived myself of numerous social media platforms, and I recorded how my behavior changed as a result of such deprivation. More details can be seen below:
I uninstalled (and logged out of the websites, where applicable, of) each of the following social media platforms, and I did not return to them for four (4) weeks:
- Twitter (zero usage)
- Instagram (zero usage)
- Facebook (zero usage)
- Twitch (zero usage)
- Snapchat (zero usage)
- Discord (zero usage)
- Reddit (zero usage)
- YouTube (to an extent; To avoid becoming too bored, I signed into an alternate account where I watched a greatly reduced amount of content that I deemed to be neither negative nor distractive)
I recorded the following data:
- The number of times muscle memory caused me to scroll through my smartphone’s (and laptop’s) app drawer (or web browser) to locate a social media app (or website).
- The number of times I felt like I needed to (and wished I could) clarify information on social media, either by posting something new or by checking to see if someone messaged me and needed my reply.
- The number of times per day I missed using social media.
- The number of times per day I enjoyed not using social media.
- A list of tasks and activities that I did instead of using social media.
*Everything listed above took place at random throughout each day. Any thoughts/feelings that came to me while I was updating the results of this study were not counted.
Also, both with and without social media over two (2) individual-but-comparable four-week periods, I recorded:
- The amount of time I used my smartphone each day.
- The amount of sleep I got each night.
Okay. That was a rather wordy explanation. Perhaps some graphs can better convey to you the precise scope of this study.
The Results
As you can tell from the graphs above, during the four-week period when I was without social media, my feelings about social media and inclinations to use social media tended to mimic each other. During the first week or so without social media, my mind was still very attributed to having social media (and would be anxious about what was going on in the world of social media). Basically, I would think about using social media (seen in Figure 1), then my muscle memory would scroll to specific locations within my smartphone’s app drawer (where the likes of Twitter, Instagram, Discord, and Twitch were located), and, when I recognized that the apps were not there, I would form a feeling (either withdrawal or enjoyment, seen in Figure 2) about not having access to social media.
In the beginning, anxiety was high. I thought a lot about social media, and I missed it quite a bit. Eventually, both graphs began to plateau as social media started to leave my mind and become replaced by other habits/”hobbies.” Still, there were a couple of peaks throughout this four-week period that were brought about by sheer boredom. If I did have access to social media, I suppose these would have been the most appropriate times to use it, since it would not have distracted me from more important matters. Finally, the four-week period was almost over. Since I was obviously aware of this, the urge to use social media started to grow a little bit on the final two (2) days. I thought about social media more throughout the day, and I started to miss it more as a result.
*Read until the end for an explanation of “Relapse Week.”
Let us just get to the point here. In Figure 3, the difference between the two averages is rather conclusive. With social media, smartphone usage averaged at “5 hours, 32 minutes” per day. Without social media, smartphone usage averaged at “4 hours, 27 minutes” per day. Essentially, just by uninstalling and signing out of a few apps and websites, I gave myself an extra hour every day to focus on more important/beneficial tasks and activities, without the presence of any anxiety to check new posts, threads, live streams, or messages.
With social media, I averaged “7 hours, 58 minutes” of sleep each night. Without social media, I averaged “9 hours, 0 minutes” of sleep each night. So, while I used my smartphone for an hour less every day, I slept an hour more every day (on average, of course). Less of a bad habit and more of a good habit seems like a pretty favorable tradeoff.
Correlation does not equal causation, but it is still very clear that more sleep was had without the presence of social media, as mentioned before. As to whether or not less sleep was had because of social media, that is not very conclusive.
All that can really be determined is that the coefficient of determination (R²) is higher for the plot representing the four-week period with social media (0.3126), so perhaps a smartphone with social media did have a larger effect on my sleep pattern.
This makes sense because, on days when I would wake up earlier than required, if social media was on my smartphone, the anxiety to read messages and new posts kept me from falling back to sleep…almost every single time. Without access to social media, however, I could easily return to sleep after waking up early.
Relapse?
You probably noticed that I added data from a fifth week to some of the above graphs. Basically, I wanted to know how the urge to use social media after being without it for four (4) weeks would affect my behavior once I actually returned to it. Therefore, I decided to continue the study by one (1) week, just to see if there was any… relapse (for lack of a better word), or if I would choose to continue to reap the benefits of not using social media.
I wanted to examine that week independently of the others, so all of my observations from that week are as follows:
- Figure 2: Feelings about social media (while without social media) — Essentially, once I returned to social media, I wanted to “catch up” on everything I missed while I was away. As you can see from the graph, though I missed social media a lot on the first day of this week, I immediately realized how much I enjoyed being without it. This was mostly because negative stories and negative thoughts (that had no bearing on my life whatsoever) managed to immediately make me feel worse and want to leave social media again.
- Figure 3: Smartphone usage with and without social media — As I mentioned before, “5 hours, 32 minutes of smartphone usage per day with social media,” and “4 hours, 27 minutes of smartphone usage per day without social media.” Upon returning to social media, my usage climbed all the way back up to “5 hours, 31 minutes.” I lost the entire hour-per-day that I gained over the previous four (4) weeks.
- Figure 4: Sleep pattern with and without social media — “8 hours, 21 minutes.” By adding social media back into my life, my sleep declined from “9 hours, 0 minutes” to “8 hours, 21 minutes.” I would not say that I was as eager to use social media as I was before, but it definitely still cost me some sleep both at night (when I would normally just watch ASMR, then fall asleep) and in the morning (when I would normally just continue sleeping, uninterrupted, until it was time to wake up).
So, I would say that there was some “relapse” after returning to social media. I slept less, and I used my smartphone just as much as I did before beginning this study. However, I would also say that I now use social media more “intelligently” than before. I am no longer mindlessly scrolling through my feed all day, nor am I liking everything I see, nor am I reading nearly as many (negative, hateful) comments as I was before. If I am watching a (popular) live stream, I completely close the chat window because large, online groups tend to make some of the worst social decisions on the Internet.
Conclusion:
By manually filtering what I see online, I am exposed to a lot less negativity. By using social media less often, I am allowing useful/exciting information to rise to the surface, so I never even see all of the ignorant harassment. By posting fewer opinions, I receive less uncalled-for backlash.
Though it is unfortunate that negativity, harassment, and backlash exist in such high quantities on social media, there are ways to avoid it. By avoiding it, we can experience better sleep and sharper awareness, and we can be physically present during the times that matter most. There is no need for us to uninstall every single social media app on our smartphones, but there is a need to lessen our anxieties by staying offline when we need to focus on ourselves first.
So…social media is great, but do we need it? No. Are we better off without it? Probably. Should we use it? Yes, but wisely and occasionally.
Hey! Thank you so much for reading this article. It was a fun one, and I learned a lot. Normally, I would write something like… “Feel free to follow me on social media,” but I would much rather prefer that you invest your time elsewhere 😉, but…I will still link one of my other articles, in case you are interested!
Ever wonder how poor the decisions of large online crowds are? Check it out:
