Social media mental health Archives - Post Control Marketing

I taught a social media strategy class this summer and I was surprised to find most students were not very active on social media personally. At first, I was stunned. This was a social media class after all. Would you take a film class if you didn’t watch movies?

After getting to know the students I found two reasons for this inactivity. It was a graduate course with a mix of older professionals and younger students right out of undergrad in our 4+1 MBA program. The older professionals never really got into social media. The younger students deleted personal accounts like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat for negative personal effects.

To see if this was unusual, I posted on a social media professor’s Facebook group asking if other instructors saw this in their classes. The number of responses indicate it’s not unusual. Most professors notice students backing away from personal social media use and mention reports of people limiting social media to focus on wellness.

This is a graph showing a stead increase in the search term

Focus On Social Media Wellness Is Increasing.

Social media apps have faced increasing scrutiny for their negative effects on youth. It’s been a year since the U.S. Surgeon General issued an advisory on youth mental health and social media. This fall an increasing number of U.S. schools are Implementing student cellphone bans amid a mental health crisis and decreased learning. I instituted tech limits in my classes after the pandemic due to negative learning outcomes.

A recent article from Very Well Mind shared the news that TikTok is adding automatic 60-minute daily time limits for users under 18. This may not be surprising considering the recent scrutiny over teen social media use. What was interesting is that the article also posed the question, “Could everyone benefit from similar time limits?”

The article makes a good case for restrictions citing a study from the Journal of Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking which found people who stopped using social media (Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram) for a week had significant improvements in their anxiety, well-being, and depression. The average age of study participants was 30.

Very Well Mind interviewed Jamilia Jones, a clinical therapist who says, “By learning to set boundaries on the time and energy we invest in scrolling through our feeds, we can potentially reduce feelings of anxiety, depression, and loneliness often associated with excessive social media consumption.”

Limits Can Help Users Maintain A Healthier Work-Life Balance.

In full disclosure, I had particular trouble writing this article because I kept feeling drawn to check my social media. That Facebook group and my LinkedIn. I’ve been posting about AI recently which has sparked a lot of conversation. I wanted to see if anyone else has Liked or commented.

Ex-Facebook president Sean Parker has admitted that Facebook was developed with the objective: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” This led to features such as the “Like” button to give users “a little dopamine hit.” Parker continued, “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

Some return to social media to see how many Likes a post, picture or video got to feel good. Others, turn to social for news or to fill time but find themselves “doomscrolling” as algorithms serve up more negative content because it keeps us engaged. This can lead to anxiety, depression, and isolation. That’s the bad. But there’s still plenty of good.

What If Your Job Is Social Media?

Social media still has many positive personal benefits. It is also a driver of business for large companies and local pizza shops. We need social media professionals and I teach students how to become them. How do you strike a balance between professional social media use while guarding against negative personal social media effects?

Boundaries to consider are social personal use, professional use (career), and company use (posting for a brand). It’s easy for these to bleed together when all are accessed anytime, anywhere from the same device. Social media professionals specifically report having a hard time with work-life balance.

We’ve talked about the negative health effects from social media, and social media professionals spend the most time there. The field is changing all the time so there’s pressure to keep up and it’s hard to leave work at the office when social media is 24/7/365. Emma Brown at Hootsuite suggests several ways to avoid social media burnout.

Ways to avoid social media burnout:

Set boundaries. Have social media–free time. Turn off work streams after work.
Give eyes a rest. Eye strain can lead to irritated eyes, neck and back pain, plus can cause headaches.
Get up and move. Walk (without your phone) regularly for mental and physical health breaks.
Get some sleep. Sleep (without devices) is healthy and makes you more productive.
Structure time. Assign parts of your day to specific activities (one-hour blocks).
Delete apps. Make your phone a personal device. Manage brand social on a laptop.
Digital detox. Take digital free time off for a night or weekend to recharge.

Do You Have To Be Personally Active On Social To Be A Social Media Professional?

This question got the most responses in the social media professors group. Some clearly say that you can’t make students be on social media even for a social media class. But others make a strong point that you can’t be a social media marketer without knowing what it is like to be on social media.

Companies used to want to hire college students to run their social media because they knew grew up spending their time on social media personally. I worried that they didn’t know enough about the business side of marketing strategy. Twelve years after I began teaching social media strategy we may see the opposite.

Today students could be studying social media marketing but limiting personal use or even deleting social media apps. A survey of 18-to 27-year-olds found significant regret over social media use. While 52% said social media benefited their lives, 29% said it harmed them personally. In fact, about half of Gen Z wish TikTok (47%) and Twitter/X (50%) were never invented.

What about current social media pros? Do they need to be active on every social platform to do their job well? Or can they run social media business accounts on platforms like TikTok and Twitter/X but not have their own account to limit personal exposure?

What Does All This Mean?

I’ve been teaching social media marketing for over a decade, have created social media campaigns for clients, and have a social media marketing book. I have benefited from social media personally and professionally. I’m obviously not recommending deleting or banning social media. But I think it’s obvious we need more balance.

I resisted having AI write this article, but I did turn to Copilot for some ideas on how to find more balance in our social media use. I think the suggestions are a good beginning.

An image of suggestion that Copilot had for balancing social media use by setting boundaries, using technology like screen time, prioritizing real-life relationships, curating your feed, and mindfulness. — Copilot doesn’t use social media, but has good suggestions for us to manage our social media use. Generated with AI (Copilot) ∙ September 6, 2024 2:30 PM

Have you seen the social media wellness trend? What does it mean for you personally and professionally whether you are a social media pro or a social media professor?

This Was Human Created Content!

I typically focus on the positive use of social media to help organizations achieve objectives. I’ve also discussed how social media professionals must act ethically to build trust in brands and their professions. I haven’t talked about the negative aspects of social media itself.

Yet, evidence of the negative effects of social media on mental health and society is increasing. Is there something unique about social media as a technology and a form of communication that may be causing negative, unintended consequences?

Book about technology's impact on society. — I’ve been reading and revisiting some books recently on technology and society.

The Medium Is The Message.

In 1964 Marshall McLuhan first expressed the idea “The medium is the message” in Understanding Media. He said, “The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” The idea is that a message comes with any new technology or way to communicate beyond the content. The characteristics of the medium influence how the message is perceived.

In 1984 Neil Postman furthered the idea in Amusing Ourselves To Death. Postman said, “The medium is the metaphor.” He observed a connection between forms of human communication and the quality of a culture where the medium influences “the culture’s intellectual and social preoccupations.” He was concerned TV and visual entertainment, consumed in smaller bits of time, would turn journalism, education, and religion into forms of show business.

Is Social Media The Message?

A key to a successful social media strategy is understanding each social media platform has unique characteristics in the form of content (video, image, text standards, and limits) and in the algorithm that determines what posts are seen by who.

These characteristics and metrics create incentives that motivate behavior. In social media that can be engagement (likes, comments, shares, views), sales (products, services), and advertising revenue (audience size, time). The distinct characteristics and incentives encourage the creation of certain types of content and messages over others.

The message of the medium becomes what the platform and its users say is important – what increases response metrics. It could be “a curated, filtered, perfect life”; “an authentic, 100% transparent sharing of personal struggles”; or “criticisms of out-groups to signal tribe membership.”

As an exercise fill in the Table below.

Consider each social platform and the content that gets results. Are there noticeable patterns or themes? From your observations describe what you believe is the overall message the platform is sending.

Spend an hour on each social media platform and see where the algorithm takes you.

Could social media also send its own message by guiding the type of content that gets posted and disseminated? Consider the types of content that get posted and disseminated on social media versus other forms of traditional media and personal communication. What message does it send and what are the fruits of that message?

There are plenty of positives of social media. It enables us to connect with family/friends, find new communities of similar interests, promote important causes, get emotional support, and learn new information, plus it provides an outlet for self-expression and creativity.

A study found that social media can play a positive role in influencing healthy eating (like fruit and vegetable intake) when shared by peers. Yet, the same study also found that fast food advertising targeting adolescents on social media can have a negative influence on unhealthy weight and disease risks.

Negative Effects of Social Media Research.

Below is a highlight of recent studies. All research has its critics and many point out that social media isn’t the exclusive cause of all negative consequences. Social media also has a lot of positive effects on individuals, businesses, organizations, and society. But we should consider its negative effects – something more people are noticing, studying, and feeling.

People Feel Social Media Isn’t Good.

A 2022 Pew Research survey in the U.S. found:

64% feel social media is a bad thing for democracy.
65% believe social media has made us more divided in our political opinions.
70% believe the spread of false information online is a major threat.

Political Out-Group Posts Spread More.

Research on Facebook/Twitter in Psychological And Cognitive Sciences found:

Political out-group posts get shared 50% more than posts about in-groups.
Out-group language is shared 6.7 times more than moral-emotional language.
Out-group language is a very strong predictor of “angry” reactions.

False Posts Spread Faster Than The Truth.

Research in Science of verified true/false Twitter news stories found:

Falsehoods are 70% more likely to be retweeted than the truth.
It took truth posts 6 times longer to reach 1,500 people.
Top 1% false posts reach 1,000-10,000 people (Truth posts rarely reach 1,000).

Algorithms Incentivize Moral Outrage.

A Twitter study in Science Advances found:

Algorithms influence moral behavior when newsfeed algorithms determine how much social feedback posts receive.
Users express outrage when in ideologically extreme networks where outrage is more widespread.
Algorithms encourage moderate users to become less moderate with peers expressing outrage.

Social Media Affects Youth Mental Health.

A 2023 U.S. Surgeon General advisory warned social media can pose a risk to the mental health of children and adolescents. Now 95% of 13–17-year-olds use social media an average of 3.5 hours a day. While acknowleding social media benefits, the advisory warned it may also perpetuate body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, social comparison, and low self-esteem.

Adults are especially concerned about social media’s effect on teens and children.

The advisory warns of relationships between youth social media with sleep difficulties and depression. Other highlights include:

Adolescents who spend more than 3 hours a day on social media double their risk of depression and anxiety.
64% of adolescents are “often” or “sometimes” exposed to hate-based content through social media.
46% of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies – just 14% said it makes them feel better.

A 2023 survey of U.S. teen girls reveals 49% feel “addicted” to YouTube, 45% to TikTok, 34% to Snapchat, and 34% to Instagram. Yet another survey of teens found they believe social media provides more positives (32% mostly positive) versus negatives (9% mostly negative). They feel it’s a place for socializing and connecting with friends, expressing creativity, and feeling supported.

Bubbles, Chambers, and Bias.

Why are we seeing both positive and negative results? Social media’s unique environment can be very supportive, keeping you connected and helping you express yourself. It can also encourage you to improve your life like peers getting you to eat healthier and improve society by making people aware of important causes.

The same social media environment has also created filter bubbles and echo chambers. Technology can knowingly or unknowingly exploit human vulnerabilities that may accentuate confirmation bias and negativity bias.

A filter bubble is an algorithmic bias that skews or limits information someone sees on the internet or on social media.
An echo chamber is ideas, beliefs, or data reinforced through repetition in a closed system such as social media that doesn’t allow the free flow of alternative ideas.
Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their existing beliefs.
Negativity bias is the tendency for humans to focus more on the negative versus the positive.

Social media algorithms make it easier to produce filter bubbles that create echo chambers. Over time social media chambers lead to confirmation bias loops of negativity incentivized by engagement metrics.

A detailed article from the MIT Technology Review seems to indicate the problem is it’s difficult for AI machine learning algorithms to minimize negative human consequences when growth is the top priority. Much of what is bad for us and society seems to be what keeps us scrolling the most.

Reducing harm may go against growth objectives and current incentive structures for tech companies to produce mega revenue increases. Social media companies like Facebook, now Meta, continue to say they are doing everything they can to reduce harm despite layoffs.

Social Media Fills Our Spare Time.

While the most popular reason for using social media is to keep in touch with family and friends (57%), the second is to fill spare time (40%). What do we fill our spare time with? With a high percentage of social media revenue depending on advertising (96% of Facebook’s and 89% of Twitter’s) newsfeeds fill with what grows engagement to serve more ads to increase revenue.

That seems to be sensationalized content that stokes fears. Shocking content hacks attention playing into our negativity bias. Perhaps Postman’s prediction of everything becoming show business is true. We’re all chasing TV ratings in the form of likes, comments, and shares.

Recently Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg challenged each other to an MMA fight. What greater spectacle than two billionaire owners of competing social media platforms fighting each other in a PPV UFC cage match? Italy’s culture minister even said that it could happen in the Roman Colosseum. I wonder what Neil Postman would say if he were alive?

Journalism Isn’t Immune To Engagement.

As news moves online organizations chase clicks and subscribers through social media. With so many options, news subscribers increasingly seek sources based on confirmation bias. Andrey Mir in Discourse describes a shift to divisive content, “because the best way to boost subscriber rolls and produce results is to target the extremes on either end of the spectrum.”

With 50% of adults getting news from social media sites often or sometimes their stories no longer compete with just other news sites. Stories compete for clicks with the latest viral TikTok and YouTube influencers’ hot takes. A study in Nature found news headlines with negative words improved reading the article. Each negative word added increased the click-through rate by 2.3%.

Are There Legal Limits Coming?

The U.S. Supreme Court sent a case back to lower courts that would have addressed whether social media companies can be held accountable for others’ social media posts. A 1996 law known as Section 230 shields internet companies from what users post online. Lawsuits have been filed alleging that social media algorithms can lead to the radicalization of people leading to atrocities such as terrorist attacks and mass shootings.

The Supreme Court ruled there was little evidence tying Google, the parent company of YouTube, to the terrorist attack in Paris. The lower court ruled that claims were barred by the internet immunity law. Many internet companies warned that undoing or limiting Section 230 would break a lot of the internet tools we have come to depend upon.

While no legislation has passed there seems to be bipartisan support for new social media legislation this year like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). KOSA would require social media companies to shield minors from dangerous content, safeguard personal information, and restrict addictive product features like endless scrolling and autoplay. Critics say KOSA would increase online surveillance and censorship.

Can Algorithms Change People’s Feelings?

A Psychological And Cognitive Sciences study found when the Facebook News Feed team tweaked the algorithm to show fewer positive posts, people’s posts became less positive. When negative posts were reduced people posted more positive posts.

Postman said we default to thinking technology is a friend. We trust it to make life better and it does. But he also warned there is a potential dark side to this friend. To avoid Postman’s fears, perhaps we need to return to McLuhan who said an artist is anyone in a professional field who grasps the implications of their actions and of new knowledge in their own time.

What do you think?

What research is there for or against the negative effects of social media on mental health and society? Should anything be done to combat the negative consequences? What can be done and who should do it?

This Was Human Created Content!