[Music] hello and welcome to this episode of mcgovern medical minutes my name is randy gay and i work in the office of communications here at mcgovern medical school at ut health in this series our goal is to share important health information from expert sources here at our school today we're going to talk about social media and how it affects our minds our relationships and our society i'd like to now introduce dr jennifer barman assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences dr robin thanks so much for being with us thank you for having me so tell me about sort of your expertise in the field and experience with social media in particular yeah social media use is a big topic these days it's really a hot topic and so it's something that's coming up a lot in working with patients um in regards to kind of addiction and how it impacts people's lives their productivity their relationships and just kind of how they function in their day-to-day lives so a lot of what we hear in the news right now is the negatives about social media and all of the the downsides and the addiction and things like that and we'll get into all of that of course but um i mean i remember when facebook first came out and we're all so excited we get to um you know connect with our loved ones and reconnect with people that we haven't talked to you for a while so what why do we use social media in the first place so social media has some really great perks to it so in regards to how we interact with people especially during the times of the covet 19 pandemic it's been so helpful for people to be able to connect with loved ones who they may not have been able to see for many months or even for longer than a year already so it has that opportunity or has that perk in regards to how people can relate to each other and stay in touch and reduce loneliness it also helps us meet new people right so dating apps are a big thing right now that people are using that to meet new people from near and far it helps us be able to stay in touch with people that we may have lost touch with over the years so old friends former classmates people who we would really like to have in our lives but may not be able to because of distance or just life stressors in general right social media gives people an opportunity to also find like-minded individuals so people who they may not have been able to come across in their day-to-day lives it's an opportunity for people to feel connected to others and particularly when it comes to marginalized groups it gives an opportunity to build a community or a setting where people can relate to one another talk to one another feel connected so there's a lot of the social elements that social media gives but it also gives us an opportunity to be on top and news be on top of entertainment stay in touch with kind of information a lot of people get their news these days from social media right and so that's something that it gives us as well we've been all using social media for a long time now and a lot of people are referring to social media addiction where we're actually we feel like we're addicted to social media is that is social media addiction a real thing well not fully for the american psychological association it isn't a diagnosis in and of itself but what we are seeing is that social media use can be similar to other addictions so behavioral addiction specifically so things such as like gambling and so while it's not diagnostic what we are seeing as clinicians and a psychologist is that there's a certain type of dopamine that we get out of it right we feel good we feel pleasure when we're looking at social media and particularly things like likes and people watching our stories that can make us feel good so because of that we are seeing that it's kind of similar to other behavioral addictions it's really interesting so how does um so now with social media becoming very monetized it's a huge market for especially advertising and because of that social media companies have found a way to push out specific content to people using their own algorithms and that ends up making people see things a certain way and how has that affected people this particular algorithm or the methods in which um social media companies are are monetizing their platforms so social media algorithms are designed to really promote information you know push the eye-catching the attractive content to you first it's a little different than something being like time-based it's more about relevance than whether or not it was recently came online and so because of that people are drawn to these things that are exciting for them you might have seen that you've searched for something online or been to a store a virtual store and look for something and poof all of a sudden it pops up on your social media feed right so it's really being the algorithms push this information that is relevant to the individual out with that though the problem is that we're seeing the same thing over and over again we're kind of being inundated with that information and so that does lead to a lot of things like overspending impulsive spending when we think of marketing um you know social media influencers as well are being used by companies to be able to promote content and promote um sales and so that all is something that can affect us as well so speaking of influencers a lot of um like when i think of an influencer i think of the you know the instagram model or the you know the tick tock dancer or or whoever that maybe a teenager or a young adult would would see and compare themselves to and think oh they've got this great life you know i see all these wonderful pictures of them at a hotel in paradise or whatever and why can't i have that life or why can't i look like that how is that affecting youth in our society well i would actually argue that it's not just affecting our youth it's affecting people of all ages right because social media use is not just youth um we often think that things like social media addiction and social media consumption is predominantly with young folks and that is true to an extent but we are seeing people of all generations using social media right now so that constant comparisons that we have we see these beautiful images we're seeing these beautiful vacations that people are on and it's terrific but then we look at our own lives that we're at work or that we don't have maybe those opportunities and it starts taking us down we start noticing that we're feeling less satisfied with our life we may be comparing ourselves in terms of our physical appearance and that can lead to things like self-esteem issues body image concerns it can ultimately lead to things like dissatisfaction sadness anxiety hopelessness even sometimes in the worst case scenarios things like suicidal thoughts i've even heard stories from some influencers that would say that they were putting on a facade in order to sort of satisfy the brands that were you know paying for their vacations and essentially paying their salaries to be on social media and how does that affect maybe someone with aspirations to be an influencer um people that are that put on a certain face in a certain um you know maybe type of clothing or take pictures a certain way to make their followers their friends all think that they're great when inside they maybe are suffering from depression sure so social media use in general is kind of a facade right people put on the best pictures on there the ones that we maybe look the most flattering or that show the best things that are happening in our lives people tend to skip over the hardships the setbacks that they experience we all have those moments where you know we might have that flat tire or burn our food while we're cooking no one's posting a picture of that we're posting those promotions the new addition to our family the new home the new car all those really awesome things but when we maybe aren't feeling great about ourselves we see that and then it's just another kind of ticket of my life's not where i want it to be where it should be and that comparison isn't just in that i wish i was living a better life but sometimes this is i should be living a better life why isn't my life that great when everyone else is is there's been a huge push i think in recent years especially about the importance of mental health and i personally have seen a lot of my friends and acquaintances on on social media sharing their experiences with mental health and depression and and seeing a lot of support from other people is that a way that we can kind of overcome some of that uh that effect that we were talking about um is actually like using social media in a positive way to connect with people share their own experiences hear about their experiences and and overcome some of that that's one of those pros one of those benefits that come out of social media right so we feel connected to people we may get support from other people hearing people's difficult times in terms of mental health care specifically or the need for mental health care specifically that can be something that can come out of social media that's great so mental health is still unfortunately very much stigmatized in our society and the more people who speak up and social media is a wonderful platform for that the better it is for us all to be able to recognize like no the everyone goes through moments of hard times everyone goes through struggles and here's some things i can do about it so how does social media affect our productivity that's a huge one so i work in student counseling services here at ut health and that's a topic that comes up basically daily with my patients productivity and the use of social media social media as we mentioned it's sometimes an addiction it's hard to kind of break that need to check how many likes do we have how many followers do we have what else is popping up on social media and it affects productivity in that way we're constantly getting notifications we're getting these dings on our phones on our smart watches on our tablets on our computers and we're being inundated by this information so it's really hard to kind of step away from that and focus on things that we need to be focusing on so it affects our productivity in that way that it keeps us from being on top of things if you're in the middle of writing something or talking about something and there's another notification that pops up it's a lot harder to not look at it than it is to quickly peer over to it and see what it is what just popped up what's the most recent news that came when we were talking about impacts on productivity it reminds me of kind of how it really distracts us from reality it's sort of like an escape it's it's it's own world social media so especially during like the pandemic in some ways it was it was good to use social media to to distract from from the real world because there were some pretty bad things going on but um i feel like it also may have had an impact on people actually disconnecting from reality which can can then be a bad thing what have you seen with that so as i had mentioned social media is kind of the best of everything that we tend to put on social media so with that sometimes we get pulled into all the the good things that people are experiencing and very little of the actual life that we have so it's easy to slip away from how we are doing what is around us what are kind of the ups and downs that we may be going through when we escape that reality unfortunately is the problems that we were facing before we escaped tend to still be there so what is digital burnout and why is it a problem you might have heard of the term zoom fatigue right that is a form of digital burnout that we have we're experiencing it because we're working from home or some people are working from home we are doing everything on our computers we may have already been doing that before the pandemic but with the pandemic it's been a lot more of that it's virtual learning it's online learning it's online shopping it's online socializing all of that at some point we're exhausted from it all and then on top of that comes social media so social media was in the picture way before the pandemic was right but with all of the burnout that we're experiencing in all these other areas of our life it's this thing that takes up another portion of our attention it takes up another some of our cognitive resources to be able to focus on it and it just it becomes too much for us i've heard that burnout even specifically digital burnout can have physical effects you know physical stress and that that we feel from from actually being effective at that sure so things like eye strain is going to be a big one with that right when we're looking at a computer screen day in and day out not just for the seven not just for the five days of the work week but seven days a week we're experiencing it it doesn't end right at the end of the work day that's when we go to the social media we watch shows we stream information on our computers all that it's a lot of information so physically we might notice things like eye strain we might notice posture changes back pain being a big one with that um headaches and details like that cool let's go into uh cyberbullying so that's that's a hot topic especially for parents but what what do we mean by cyberbullying so cyberbullying is bullying that occurs through electronic means so it's through text messages social media anything that kind of is electronically based it's no different than regular bullying what's different about it is though that it's happening virtually so with the virtual nature of it there's a lot of problems that kind of arise with that so big one that is different between regular bullying and cyber bullying is the um [Music] is the permanence of it so whatever you post online stays online even if you delete the information information gets backed up all the time screenshotted exactly things get screenshoted and so it stays pretty permanent it's also the accessibility of it so when we think of traditional bullying oftentimes we think of children and adolescents usually happens in school well when they go home hopefully they're going home to a safe environment where they get some respite from the bullying they've got people to be around distractions things like that unfortunately with cyber bullying it's actually worse once they get home right that's when they are able to look at their social media posts they're seeing all the information and it's kind of like the torment continues and it's almost like it gets worse once they leave so it's the permanence that's a big problem and it's also the accessibility and it's also the fact that it goes often unnoticed so in more traditional bullying people saw it maybe another child saw it or another teenager saw it and they spoke up maybe another student saw it and spoke up maybe the teacher overheard it maybe a parent saw it or overheard and they can intervene with cyber bullying it's often invisible to these adults or the people that could speak up right so the students that are experiencing the bullying the cyber bullying they may not be telling anyone and instead it continues to go unnoticed with accessibility the problem with that also is it's not just within that small group of people that the bullying is occurring it's other kids in a school it's kids from other schools it's kids from across the city across the globe that are unfortunately able to also see the um see the cyber bullying when it occurs that also can be a problem i imagine when you get outside of the other kids in the school because then they're anonymous right so if i'm if i'm bullying somebody online and i'm and i'm using whatever even a fake profile if i want to there's no repercussions that i'm worried about right yeah so people are kind of hidden behind the safety of the computer screen unfortunately and you know sometimes that's a nice thing being hidden behind the safety of a computer screen right it helps people get out of their comfort zone as it applies to cyber bullying though the problem is so much negative occurs as you mentioned people sometimes use fake profiles to cause the bullying or to bully others and then there's no one that can be linked back to it or no official means of linking it back to that person and the repercussions of that are not just short term but they're also long term so short term we might see things like social withdrawal being afraid of going to school being afraid of socializing with others anxiety depression self-esteem issues suicidality but long term as well given the permanence of information that goes virtual or that is online the problem with that is future employers may have access to that college admissions committees may have access to that um so people who make decisions later in life may have access to that too so that awkward moment that we probably all went through at some point in their life that gets documented long term when we talk about cyberbullying is this only in relation to children can this happen to adults as well sure cyber bullying unfortunately occurs in adulthood too what we see in adulthood is often the idea of trolls internet trolls now that's an internet slang term there but it's this idea of people kind of leaving posts or comments on information often to kind of get an emotional reaction from someone else and so this these posts may be based in fiction they may be false data or they may just be something mean or derogatory in nature and so in adulthood we're dealing with the trolls now on top of potential unfortunately cyber bullying too in the more traditional means comment sections have really become a an awful place to dive into on on pretty much any social media platform it's hard to avoid negative comments i i have to stop myself a lot of the time from from even just looking at them even on a post that i feel like is really nice and i wanted to just go comment on but then i my mood is just soured by somebody just just being mean and that's kind of a shame right it takes a toll on us it doesn't feel good right where you might have wanted to leave a positive note a good note a good comment you're going to maybe have second thoughts you're like oh wow maybe i'm wrong about this someone else thinks this is such a horrible idea a horrible concept a horrible thing to that i want to comment on and so it may distract us it may make us just not want to partake in it in a positive way so it seems it almost sounds hopeless but what can we do about cyber bullying can we can we avoid them can we ignore them so it's so important when we think either cyber bullying or trolls do not respond that's the big one there by responding to bullies and i'm just gonna use that term they're bullies to apply for both um it's almost like feeding them they want they get a rile out of it and so we want to be sure that we don't comment on it um doing things like changing your settings to have a private account can be helpful to stay safe report bullying when you see it you know that see something say something that happens or that gets really promoted it also applies online if you see something say something and you can say that as a parent by talking to the school by reporting it to law enforcement and report it to law enforcement particularly when it's things like child pornography when it's threats of harm if someone's in danger report that to law enforcement also report it to social media websites and lots of social media websites have a safety center go to that report it there because we all need to do our part to be able to ensure that this bullying ends i would imagine if we see somebody that's a victim of bullying as well potentially at risk of harming themselves or suicidal thoughts something we should report yes see something say something if you know that someone is being bullied be a support for them help them lead them to the resources so if someone is having suicidal thoughts the national suicide prevention hotline is going to be key there and particularly for the teens and kids in our life there's also the text line that may be particularly of interest sometimes we don't know what to say and when we're feeling distressed and what's nice about the text line is it can let us allow our fingers to do the talking we may be in a setting where we can't or we don't want someone else overhearing us making that call so um the text line could be really helpful in that way that's great i didn't know about the text yeah it's a really awesome resource yeah that's great i didn't know so earlier we talked about or we touched on um the fact that social media is so heavily monetized nowadays now that involves people actually spending money while they're on facebook or twitter or or what have you so how are people spending money on social media and why is it so much easier to spend money through through online means and and why do we end up spending too much sometimes so social media can sometimes lead to online purchases and that's a big one that we're seeing that people are unfortunately spending way more than they intended to spend just because it popped up as we talked about earlier you know when we google search something or search on our website a retailer for something all of a sudden it pops up on our social media and it's almost like oh this is fate they really wanted me to buy it um so we end up buying more than we intended to and it's so much easier it's just one click away there's no exchange of money and goods in the way it does in a typical traditional brick and mortar store so it's easy to end up spending way more than you intended to there's also these microtransactions that happen a lot in things like apps and video games where people aren't even thinking about it's just an extra dollar that they're spending it pops up why not i'll click it and buy it with everything being electronic it's so much easier to overspend unfortunately with that we've had this evolution of spending where it used to be okay you have physical dollars and physical you know change that you would exchange and you would have a very real understanding of how much money you have available to spend and you would bring that to the store then we had credit cards and now we're on our and then we're on our computer shopping for books on amazon and now amazon saves all of our credit card information so we don't even have to go get our card to type our card back in in order to pay it so it's yeah it can really get out of control there i'm sure and you mentioned uh micro transactions in in video games and things like that and i think that's so interesting because yeah people end up um with spending just a little bit at a time and i know the stories of of kids spending their parents money on a game that they'll never even remember playing when they're you know 20 years old or something and spend thousands of dollars and it's incredible it can definitely get out of control yeah it's such a thoughtless experience right all that information is saved or credit card information is saved and it's just a click and something happens after that right a few days later with amazon two days later you might get your prime delivery with an app or with a video game it's instantaneous it says instant gratification that unfortunately comes with it how do we avoid that are there some tricks maybe that we can or some tips that we could take to kind of limit that or or restrictions we can put in ourselves to to try to keep it to a minimum so setting a budget for ourselves for how much we want to a lot um for how much we want to allocate to online spending in a month um keeping track of that too so whether that's keeping track of it with like a memo on your phone or through a formal means like excel document but keeping track of your expenditures so that you know how much you've spent already this month and also deleting the credit card numbers from your from your google chrome or from your web browser i think it's so much easier to just click buy then getting up going to your wallet or your purse taking out the credit card and then buying something so trying to give yourself a few extra steps in that way can reduce that impulsive shopping that unfortunately happens i know i get so frustrated whenever i'm on an app that loses track of my uh my credit card information and i have to go up and and get my card to type it back in but then it does make you think twice about like you know do i really need to spend you know 50 on doordash or should i go and pick it up myself right it's an extra step that one small extra step can make all the difference between an impulsive buy and not what are some other major concerns and dangers of social media that we're seeing the one big thing is human trafficking social media has become a platform for human trafficking to occur so that is something that we're seeing unfortunately a lot right now with social media use there's also a lot of information that or rather i should say misinformation that gets carried through and sometimes it's even through people that we trust people who we thought were credible sources we see that information and we may start believing it that may not always be factual information unfortunately also as we talked about earlier social media gives people community sometimes that community may not be a healthy community or helpful community for them to have and so it's not uncommon that we're seeing people going down the so to say rabbit hole of things like conspiracy theories or extremist groups unfortunately because of social media one of the major reasons that social media has become so either addictive or just commonplace or hard to avoid is the accessibility of it right it's on our phones now when it first came out this was you know it was myspace and it was facebook and it was all on our computers when we got home from school or from work and but now it's on our phones and the notifications the little push notifications and the dings you have to look at it if i feel my my phone vibrate my pocket i have to take out and i have to i have to look i feel like so how do we how do we stop that how do we limit it how do we stop ourselves from from forcing ourselves to look at it every time we get a notification or uh or pulling ourselves away from it for a little bit we're definitely inundated by social media it's on our phones on our tablets on our computers our smart watches no matter where we turn their social media as well and while social media has some amazing things that it's given us the problem with it is that it does also have some limits and the goal of this video is not to make social media into a horrible thing that we should all stop using it's about building a healthy relationship so good place to start turning off notifications so making sure that it's not that ding every few minutes that you might have that takes your mind off of what you were doing so being sure that you're maybe de-linking the notifications from your phone to your tablet or to your computer or to your smartwatch so giving yourself a little bit of a break from social media and not being tempted as much by it throughout the course of your day that'll help with things like productivity it'll help with well-being as well some things that can be helpful is to track the amount of social media use you have most social media apps these days have a feature on there that you can see how much time you're spending using the app if it's a little bit of time that may be okay for you if you're noticing that you're using up a quarter of your day or half your day on social media that's when it's probably become excessive and may need to be cut back on so certain things like as we discussed the notifications other things that can be helpful is to take a cleanse so taking a break from social media for a few days few weeks few months if you need to can be helpful so doing that by deactivating your account or even just deleting the app from your phone can also reduce that impulsive checking of social media how about with our kids so how um i mean i know it's we can similarly limit our children's use of social media i know there's some childlock services and things like that how do we help our kids as they grow up build a healthy relationship with social media while many of their friends may be using it a lot and they may be worried about fitting in so healthy habits that we can teach our kids right now are oftentimes carried on throughout one's life right like healthy eating habits healthy drinking habits healthy social media habits as well so being sure that children are not over posting information on there doesn't mean they shouldn't have a social media account i'll let that be up to the parents to decide whether or not they should have that but if you choose to let your kids have it um being sure that you're monitoring what they're you using social media for how they're using it what they're posting and how much time they're spending on social media so those things like parental controls can be helpful with that of course but even just being there as much as you can checking in on them and how they're using social media some additional ways to build a healthy relationship with social media is to be conscious of your social media presence so being conscious of what you're posting and how you're posting it so posting things that are meaningful to you in some way can be a nice way to cherish that memory but making sure that you're not kind of searching for the likes or hunting the likes counting the likes checking back in regularly for the likes so reducing that can reduce some of that social media use as well being sure that you don't have your phone near you while you're trying to sleep a big time suck before bed or if you wake up in the middle night is checking your phone not only do we know things like the blue light can be really harmful for our sleep habits but also it leads us to getting on social media and sometimes that becomes excessive or time suck and so um putting your phone across the room can be helpful in reducing that need or that feeling to check yeah it's interesting to think that something digital like that can have a physical effect on us but losing sleep over social media can be a real problem and we know it's become a very pervasive problem unfortunately so earlier we talked about misinformation so how do we avoid misinformation and make sure that we are getting our news and information from reliable sources so being sure that you're looking at where the link is leading you to and so being sure that you're checking websites that are credible and not just maybe coming from an uncredible source things like that so if you're seeing someone post something on social media before reposting it check the facts double check that what you're posting actually is valid and credible so with all of the you know crazy influencer lifestyles and like chasing and things like that how do we maintain our sense of self and our positive self image it's important to be mindful of what you're consuming via social media and with that that not all information on there may be accurate or at least not maybe comprehensive and so being aware of that that the information you're getting on there may not be an accurate reflection of things is helpful also counting your own accomplishments the good things that you're experiencing in your own life it's easy to kind of fall into a place of oh my life sucks it's not as great as what i'm seeing on social media but probably there's still things to be to be glad about so being sure that you are looking at your own accomplishments being sure that you're looking at the your own good things that are happening in your life and having gratitude learning to love yourself is important with this also being mindful the fact that with social media sometimes information is altered right pictures are altered they're photoshopped they may not be an accurate reflection of what life really is like so just being aware of that and [Music] shutting down social media taking a break from social media whenever you notice that it's become harder and harder to differentiate between the two yeah some things that sometimes the great things in our life that that we can reflect on and be proud of or be happy about aren't necessarily things that we're going to be able to post on social media or whatever that makes sense to and so maybe being able to internalize that and to be grateful for those things can help yeah yeah not everything needs to be put online for us to be appreciative of it so do some self-reflection and see what it is that you are grateful for in your life something that's really important to my family is quality time and something that my wife has told me on occasion is to put my phone away at the dinner table so um is there something that you want to say about being present in real life not just our presence on social media absolutely i think your wife is definitely on to something there it's another way that we can kind of build a healthier relationship with social media is to be present here and now so being sure to kind of put your phone away um if you're in a conversation flip the phone over that you're not seeing every pop-up every notification as it comes in just being present in a conversation can be already a better way of having social media in your life you