Is Social Media Making You Depressed???
Picture this: Your scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed, you notice how every person is having a great time. There are pictures at parties that seem to be out of a movie and you wonder if you are the only person in the world sitting by themselves on a friday night. Without knowing it, you end up looking through Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for over 3hrs and wonder to yourself why you are so lame. Your friends are posting pictures at a crazy party and you are swimming in envy of their life. A week later you are finally going out with those same friends that were posting those awesome pictures a week ago and you realize that their pictures are nowhere near the reality of their 'girls nights out'
Nowadays rather than friends having a fun night out at a bar, they would rather sit at the bar scrolling through their phone and occasionally asking a random person to take a picture of all the girls to post to social media. We live in a society where are social media self and actual self are two completely different people. The photos that are being posted are exaggerated to make their lives seem glorious and amazing to their high school friends when in reality they are just sitting in an apartment with 5 people. It is not only depressing to the people looking at these photos because it makes them feel like they are missing out on life when in reality the people posting these 'eggerated' and 'fake' photos who are truly missing out on life because they are not experiencing life, they are just documenting it via social media.
This is an interesting study done to show that the more time you spend on social media, the more depressed you become because you are comparing your life to others.
By James Plafke Apr. 8, 2014 5:37 pm
Instead of going out on Friday after work, you’ve been going to the gym and going home early. Your coworkers invite you out for a drink, but it’s on a Wednesday and you use the weeknight as an excuse to bail even though the same reasoning would apply to the very people who invited you out. You’re kind of a drag lately, but nothing is really wrong — you’re just down for some unexplainable reason. A new scientific study suggests that social media may be the cause of your slump.
We’ve all been there: you decide to stay in and relax one weekend, but when absent-mindedly checking in on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, you’re hit with a barrage of pictures of your friends having what appears to be a phenomenal night out. Meanwhile, you just ordered delivery for one from the local sandwich shop that’s only a five-minute walk away. You opted to stay in that night, wanting to relax after an arduous week, but now you’re pretty down. Your life is objectively fine, but whether you like it or not, it’s now being compared to your friends’ Instagram stream. Scientists from the University of Innsbrook in Austria have found that — even if you don’t realize it — removing social media from your life may increase your level of happinessbecause you aren’t constantly comparing someone’s highlights to your lowlights.
Conducted by psychologists Christina Sagioglou and Tobias Greitemeyer, the first experiment consisted of 123 Facebook users. They were asked how much time they spent on Facebook, then were surveyed about their mood. The results found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the lower their mood would be.
The second experiment was performed with a total of 263 participants split into three groups. One group spent 20 minutes on Facebook before taking the mood survey, one spent 20 minutes on the internet but not on Facebook before the survey, and the other group didn’t spend any time on the internet and instead immediately took the survey. The results were the same as the first experiment: the Facebook users’ mood had dropped, while the others did not.
Analysis found that the Facebook users’ mood dropped because they felt they were wasting their time on a meaningless activity. As mentioned above, this could’ve been amplified because — as we all know — your friends generally post the exciting, happy moments of their lives on Facebook, rather than the moments where they’re, for instance, sitting around by themselves killing time on Facebook.
The study, of course, needs further analysis. However, it doesn’t take a scientist to figure out why you’d be a bit unhappy watching other people have fun on the weekend while you’re at home doing nothing of consequence. It just takes one to scientifically prove it.
What I have to say is to not believe everything you see on Facebook, Intagram, or Twitter. No matter how fun the party looks, it probably was not as fun as it is portrayed.
Posted by: Jackie O
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