Social Media Makes Us Unhappy - And Here Is Why and How to Avoid It
Some of the few negative mental health consequences that researchers have linked to social media use are disrupted sleep, lower life satisfaction and poor self-esteem. Somehow the same platforms that can help people feel more connected and knowledgeable also contribute to loneliness, disatisfaction and disinformation.
It’s easy to quickly get lost in social media. When people encounter a platform where they can infinitely scroll for more information, it can trigger a similar reward system as in anticipating a winning lottery ticket or going to a fancy restaurant expecting great food. It’s a powerful way that these apps are designed to keep us checking and scrolling, says researcher Amanda Baughan, a graduate student specializing in human-computer interaction at the University of Washington.
“The 30 Minute Ick Factor”
The 30-Minute Ick Factor is when people mean to check their social media briefly but then find that 30 minutes have passed, and when they realize how much time they have spent, they have this sense of disgust and disappointment in themselves. Research has shown that people are dissatisfied with this habitual social media use. A lot of people frame it as meaningless, unproductive or addictive.
Additionally, the design of social media can have a lot of power in how people interact with one another and how they feel about their online experiences. For example, when people were encouraged to start talking about something contentious in a comment thread by switching to direct messaging, participants really liked it. Direct communication, even online, helped to resolve their conflict and replicated a solution we use in-person: people having a public argument move to a private space to work things out.
Interventions that make a difference.
Not surprisingly, people only have a different experience when they actively choose to make changes. For example, the most successful were custom lists and reading history labels. In custom lists, the study app forced users to categorize the content they followed, such as “sports” or “news” or “friends.” Then, instead of interacting with Twitter’s main feed, they engaged only with content on these lists. This would be easy to replicate without joining a study, but there would have to be the person’s commitment do doing this on their own.
In a reading history intervention, people received a message when they were caught up on the newest tweets. Rather than continuing to scroll, they were alerted to what they had already seen, and so they focused on just the newest content. Those interventions reduced dissociation, and when the researchers interviewed the participants, people said they felt safer checking their social media accounts when these modifications were present. Several social media sites today allow you to set a timer alerting you to the time you have spent on the app. If you prefer to be a little happier about your use of social media, use that timer!
Credit:
A Summary of Amanda Baugan’s research and an edited interview with her were published under the title Why Social Media Makes People Unhappy--And Simple Ways to Fix It (Author: Daisy Yuhas) in Scientific American, June 20, 2022