Social Media Can Be A Great Deal Of Social Support And Joy

Are there some people who are coping less well, relative to their counterparts in previous generations? For some reason I’ve never quite understood, this entertainment aspect of social media is almost entirely left out of the public conversation. Social media apps can be an endless source of potential entertainment and comedy to share with your friends, for adults as well as teenagers. Social media giants have not created these apps out of the goodness of their hearts. We also return to these apps time and time again because they are cleverly designed to hook in our attention. If you’re not sure if and when you’ll get a response, or what the other person will say, then it feels better when it pays off. Another key feature of social media feeds is that they allow us to scroll almost indefinitely, not to mention that the content is tailored to our interests based on the trove of data being gathered about our preferences. But just because social media is designed to hold our attention in these various ways doesn’t mean it can’t be a powerful source of entertainment and social connection at the same time. In the real world, humans can be hideous and awful to each other, and that happens online, too. Being the target of this abuse can take its toll on mental health and, at its worst, it may increase risk of suicide. An important point to consider is that the vast majority of young people who are bullied online are also being bullied in the real world. Cyberbullying creates few new victims, but is mainly a new tool to harm victims already bullied by traditional means. Nonetheless, there are certainly some reasons why being bullied online as well could bring additional suffering and harm.

Meeting Your Match

Online, a single act of abuse can be endlessly replicated, spreading far beyond the victim’s control. For young people in particular, the fact that bullying can continue online means there is no safe haven when the school day ends. Victims who feel unsafe at school now feel unsafe everywhere, whenever they pull out their phone. In this way, social media has enabled a new form of an old phenomenon that we already knew was damaging, and has potentially made it worse. For some, it can certainly be harmful. It can trigger and exacerbate existing vulnerabilities, and it can amplify and prolong social problems that started in the real world. Although we don’t have definitive data on this, and possibly never will, it’s entirely plausible that social media could be the trigger that tips a vulnerable person over the blurry line between mental health and illness. But social media can also be a source of a great deal of social support and joy, and it’s vital that we recognize just how layered its effects can be. It’s simply not possible to say whether social media is good or bad for mental health. Yet the public conversation remains fixated only on the harms. For all of history, people have been concerned about the latest trends in younger generations and the damage new technologies might be doing to them, fears that tend to abate as the generations pass and as different trends and technologies come along. I also wonder whether there’s something frustrating and scary for today’s parents about being able to see so clearly how much psychological space their adolescent’s social world takes up.

Courage Doesn't Always Roar

Of course, some parents are worried about social media because their child is being bullied or has been upset by something specific that has happened online, and in that situation it’s completely appropriate to be concerned. Now, parents see this fascination manifest itself right in front of them. There’s a strange moment that all adults experience at some point when we realize that we are no longer the young ones. I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. In truth, the fear and even contempt directed at social media probably stems from a bit of all of these things. To understand the recent increases in mental health problems and mental illness, it’s reasonable to consider the effects of phones and social media. There really are some legitimate concerns about these platforms, and we still have very little decent evidence about their potential harms. But we shouldn’t focus on phones and social media to the exclusion of other possible explanations. If we accept that increasing social media use is, at most, only part of the story, then what else might be contributing to the increased reported rates we’re seeing today? Even if no one could have predicted the coronavirus pandemic, America’s college students and early twentysomethings somehow aren’t surprised. Many of our first full memories of national news concern the 2008 financial crisis, the housing market collapse, and the subsequent recession that left many of our young parents in financial nightmares that stalled them for years. The same argument has been made on the other side of the pond. They were children when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the Great Recession followed.

Out Of Tears

Arguably, it is the rule, not the exception, that each generation faces something that could be deemed a fresh and unique source of stress. Modern life, in other words, was considered to be too stressful. They are related and similar to the cyclical fears about new technology. The nature of the stress was just different. So while there are indeed some new sources of stress, that can’t be the whole story. This argument is often inflated and oversimplified and used to blame young people for their distress. The flaw in this logic is that you cannot blame a child for the way they’ve been taught to deal with stress. If a young person reacts badly to stress, then that is surely the fault not of the young person but of all the adults and institutions around them who should help prepare them for life’s challenges. But leaving blame and criticism aside, is there any truth in this argument?