Social Media and Your Brain

Modern life can be a chaotic combination of work, appointments, social obligations, school, and the list goes on, and on, and on, and on. You get my point. Although many of us enjoy this busy, go get after it, life style our mind and body was not necessarily wired for the constant stimulation. The progression of technology and modern economies over the last 250 years has created more stimulation for the modern human’s brain than ever before in history. Although our brains are more than capable of accomplishing amazing things, that take great effort and concentration, they are not infallible. With this new highly stimulating world that we live in nowadays with smart phones, Youtube, and TikTok there are several things that are beginning to go very wrong with our mental health.

One of the most detrimental sources of this over stimulation is social media. I have personally been seeing clients come in with more and more severe anxiety, depression, and low self esteem that can be traced back to chronic phone and social media use. I use the following example to try and explain how these social media companies were structured and how that structure can have negative effects on client’s mental health. Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat, and TikTok are all massive corporations whos main goal is to make money. They make their money by selling add space to companies that want to get their products in front of as many peoples eyeballs as possible. Therefore, social media companies’ main goal is to create and curate content on their pages that will keep their users engaged for as long as humanly possible. The longer each one of their users is on their platform the more they will be able to charger companies for marketing space. This means that the company’s main goal is to create an addictive and emotionally triggering experience in its users to keep them there for as long as possible.

So now here we are just scrolling away through Instagram and TikTok not having any idea of what our visual experience on these social media sights is doing to our overall mental health. The areas of your brain that are being activated while you are using social media are the same reward areas of your brain that are activated when eating food, having sex, exercising, doing drugs, pretty much all the things that will make you feel good, and also possibly develop an addiction. So presents the problem. When utilizing these platforms without the knowledge of what they are designed to do it can almost be equivalent to when people were encouraged to smoke cigarettes without any understanding of what it would do to your body. Therefore, unregulated abuse of social media will more than likely cause, or exacerbate, mental illness.

Now that we understand what is going on behind the scenes with social medias possible negative affects on our mental health, it is time to discuss possible solutions. It would be too easy to just say “yeah just delete all that stuff and stick your head in the sand” now this might be necessary for individuals who can not regulate their use; however, life is never that black and white. Learning how to implement cognitive behavioral skills that will allow you to better regulate and understand your use of social media can be highly beneficial. You can find an introduction to these techniques in a previous article Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Anxiety — Premium Virtual Counseling Services (harvardavenuecounselingservices.com) . Furthermore, our counselors at Harvard Avenue Counseling Services have experience in helping our clients navigate social media use and misuse. We look forward to helping you find a healthier balance with your relationship with social media.