I'm fat. Wow, I'm fat. She's only 19 years old?
What am I doing with my life? Hey, two likes, nice. Do I like this photo?
Does she really need more likes? Hey, I hope I'm going to be invited to the wedding. What?
One more like. Nice. Welcome to the internal monologue of a typical social media scroll. A monologue that so many of us have every day, but we don't think about. We don't talk about it.
In fact, many of us can't even recognize it happening. I'm Bailey Parnell and I'm going to talk to you about the unintended consequences social media is having on your mental health. I'm going to show you what's stressing you out every day, what it's doing to you, and how you can craft a better experience for yourself online. Now just over a year ago, my sister and I took a four-day vacation to Jasper, Alberta. This was the first no-work vacation I had taken in four years.
On this vacation, I was going dark. I was turning on airplane mode, no email, and no social media. Now the first day I was there, I was still experiencing phantom vibration syndrome.
That's where you think your phone went off and you check and it didn't. I was checking incessantly. I was distracted in conversation. I was seeing these gorgeous sights Jasper had to offer, and my first reaction was to take out my phone and post it on social.
But of course it wasn't there. The second day was a little bit easier. And you might be thinking I'm ridiculous, but I hadn't been completely disconnected in over four years. This was practically a new experience again.
It wasn't until the fourth day I was there that I was finally comfortable without my phone. I was sitting with my sister, literally on the side of this mountain, when I started thinking to myself, what is social media doing to me? What is it doing to my peers? That was only four days, and it was anxiety-inducing.
It was stressful, and it resulted in withdrawals. That's when I started to ask questions and have since started my master's research into this subject. You see, I've worked in social marketing, primarily in higher education, for most of my career.
That means I work with a lot of 18 to 24 year olds, which also happens to be the most active demographic on social media. The other thing you need to know about me is that I'm young enough to have grown up with social media. but just old enough to be able to critically engage with it in a way that 12-year-old me probably couldn't. So my life is social media, personally, professionally, and academically. And if it was doing this to me, what was it doing to everyone else?
Well, I immediately found out I wasn't alone. The Center for Collegiate Mental Health found that the top three diagnoses on university campuses are anxiety, depression, and stress. And numerous studies from the US, Canada, the UK, you name it, have linked this high social media use with these high levels of anxiety and depression. But the scary thing is that high social media use is almost every one I know. It's my friends, it's my family, my colleagues.
90% of 18-to 29-year-olds are on social media. We spend, on average, two hours a day there. We don't even eat for two hours a day. 70% of the Canadian population is on social media. Our voter turnout isn't even 70%.
Anything we do this often is worthy of critical observation. Anything we spend this much time doing has lasting effects on us. So let me introduce you to four of the most common stressors on social media that if go unchecked have potential to become full-blown mental health issues. And this is by no means an exhaustive list.
Number one, the highlight reel. Just like in sports, the highlight reel is a collection of the best and brightest moments. Social media is our personal highlight reel.
It's where we put up our wins, or when we look great, or when we're out with friends and family. But we struggle with insecurity because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else's highlight reels. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others.
And yes, this was happening before social media, with TV and celebrity. But now it's happening all the time, and it's directly linked to you. Here's a perfect example I came across in preparation for this talk. It's my friend on vacation. BRB nap.
Wait, why can't I afford vacation? Why am I just sitting here in my PJs watching Netflix? I want to be on a beach.
But here's the thing, I know her very well. I knew this was out of the ordinary for her. I knew she was typically drowning in schoolwork. But we think, who wants to see that? The highlights are what people want to see.
In fact, when your highlights do well, you encounter the second stressor on social media, which is number two, social currency. Just like the dollar, a currency is literally something we use to attribute value to a good or service. In social media, these likes, the comments, the shares, they've become this form of social currency by which we attribute value to something.
In marketing, we call it the economy of attention. Everything is competing for your attention, and when you give something a like or a piece of that finite attention, it becomes a recorded transaction attributing value. Which is great if you're selling albums or clothing.
The problem is that in our social media, we are the product, and we're letting others attribute value to us. You know someone or are someone that's taken down a photo because it didn't get as many likes as you thought it would. And I'll admit, I've been right there with you. We took our product off the shelf because it wasn't selling fast enough. This is changing our sense of identity.
We are tying up our self-worth with what others think about us, and then we're quantifying it for everyone to see. And we're obsessed. We have to get that selfie just right, and we will take 300 photos to make sure. And then we'll wait for the perfect time to post.
We're so obsessed, we have biological responses when we can't participate. Which leads me to the third stressor on social media. Number three, FOMO.
It's a light phrase, we all throw it around. But FOMO, or the fear of missing out, is an actual social anxiety from the fear that you are missing a potential connection, event, or opportunity. A collection of Canadian universities found that 7 out of 10 students said they would get rid of their social networking accounts if it were not for fear of being left out of the loop. Out of curiosity, how many people here have or have considered deactivating your social? That's almost everyone.
That FOMO you feel, the highlight reels, the social currency, those are all results of a relatively quote-unquote normal social media experience. But what if going on social every day was a terrifying experience? Where you not just questioned your self-worth, but you questioned your safety?
Perhaps the worst stressor on social media is number four, online harassment. 40% of online adults have experienced online harassment. 73% have witnessed it. And the unfortunate reality is that it is much worse and much more likely if you're a woman, LGBTQ, person of color, Muslim.
I think you get the point. The problem is that in the news, we're seeing these big stories. We're seeing the 18-year-old Tyler Clementes who took his life after his roommate secretly filmed him kissing another guy and outed him on Twitter.
We see women like Anita Sarkeesian being close to shamed off the Internet and sent death and rape threats for sharing their feminism. We see these stories once it's too late. But what about the everyday online harassment? What about that ugly Snapchat you sent your friend with the intention of it being private, and now it's up on Facebook? And so it's just one photo.
It's funny. It's just one mean comment. It's not a big deal.
But when these micro-moments happen over and over again, over time, that's when we have a macro problem. We have to recognize these everyday instances as well. Because if they go unchecked and the effects unnoticed, we are going to have many more Tyler Clementis. The effects aren't always easy to recognize.
How many of you have noticed the notifications at the top of my screen? Yeah. And how many of you, like me, are bothered that they're not checked? Yeah. Okay, here, let me check them for you.
Okay. Just one small example of what this can do to you. Maybe you simply cannot focus. Because your notifications are going off the handle and you need to check. That need eventually becomes addiction.
Regarding social media, we are already experiencing impairments similar to substance dependencies. With every like, you get a shot of that feel-good chemical, dopamine. You gain more of that social currency.
So what do we do to feel good? We check likes. Just one more time. We post. Just one more time.
We're anxious. if we don't have access. Doesn't that sound like every drug you've ever heard of? So when that grows, when your social media use goes unconfronted over time, that's when we see the rising levels of anxiety and depression. The FOMO, the distractions, the highlight reels, the comparisons, it's a lot, and it's all the time.
The Canadian Association of Mental Health found that as young as grades 7 to 12 students who spent two hours a day on social media reported higher levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. For those of you doing the math, that's as young as 12 years old. Now here's the thing.
I like social media. I do. I love it.
And hearing what I've said today might make you think I want you to get off of it, but I don't. You see, I don't think it's going anywhere. So I'm not going to waste my time telling you to spend less time on social media.
Frankly, I don't think abstinence is an option anymore. But that doesn't mean you can't practice safe social. You see, everything I've talked about today has nothing and everything to do with social media.
What do I mean? I mean social media is neither good nor bad. It's just the most recent tool we're using to do what we've always done.
Tell stories and communicate with each other. You wouldn't blame Samsung television for a bad TV show. Twitter doesn't make people write hateful posts. So when we talk about this dark side of social media, what we're really talking about is the dark side of people.
That dark side that makes harassers harass. That insecurity that makes you take down a photo you were excited to share. That dark side that looks at a picture of a happy family and wonders why yours doesn't look like that. So as parents, as educators, as friends, as bosses, this dark side is what we need to focus on.
We need preventative strategies and coping strategies. So that when you have your low days, because you will, when you're questioning your self-worth, you never get as low as Tyler Clemente and the many others like him. Okay, Bailey, how do you find social media wellness?
Here's the good news. The good news is that recognizing a problem is the first step to fixing it. So hearing this talk is just that.
Step one, recognize the problem. Do you know the power of suggestion? When someone tells you about something and then you start seeing it everywhere. That's why awareness is critical. Because now you will at least be better able to recognize these effects if and when they happen to you.
The second thing you're going to do is audit your social media diet. The same way we monitor what goes into our mouth, monitor what goes into your head and heart. Ask yourself, did that Facebook scroll make me feel better or worse off?
How many times do I actually check likes? Why am I responding this way to that photo? And then ask yourself if you're happy with the results. And you might be, and that's okay. But if you're not, move on to step three.
Create a better online experience. After my partner did his audit, he realized his self-worth was too tied up in social media, but particularly celebrities reminding him of the things he didn't have. So he unfollowed all brands and all celebrities. And that worked for him.
But it might not be celebrities for you. For me, I had to purge other people off my timeline. So let me tell you a secret. You do not have to follow your friends.
The truth is that sometimes our friends, or the people we have on Facebook as a courtesy, they just suck online. You find yourself in the middle of this passive-aggressive status war you didn't even know was happening, or you're looking at 50 photos of the same concert from the same angle. If you want to follow artists or comedians or cats, you can do that. The last thing you're going to do is model good behavior.
Offline, we're taught not to bully other kids in the playground. We're taught to respect others and treat them how they deserve to be treated. We're taught not to kick others when they're down or take pleasure in their downfalls.
Social media is a tool, and it's a tool that can be used for good, for more positive groups, for revolutions, for putting Grumpy Cat in Disney movies. I tell you, the internet is a weird place. So is social media hurting your mental health?
The answer is it does not have to. Social can tear you down, yes. Or it can lift you up, where you leave feeling better off, or have an actual laugh out loud. If I only have 24 hours in the day, if I'm going to spend two of those hours on social media, then I prefer my experiences to be full of inspiration, laughs, motivation, and a whole lot of grumpy cat in Disney movies.
Thank you.