Mental health awareness has been a hot topic as of late. We’ve seen campaigns about managing stress, bipolar disorder, relationships and other issues that take their toll on mental health. But something we haven’t really seen much of is awareness about the dangers of something that we come in contact with on a daily basis: social media.
Local university students Christine, Charlene and Amy, all BA Psychology and Communication Studies students, are opening up the discussion through an Instagram account called @byteofemotion. “We needed to come up with a project for a study unit in our course about social media. We figured the best way to do this is to focus on something that’s very close to our hearts: mental health,” they tell us.
“With social media on the rise, we wanted to create something that can help people understand the importance of the relationship between the two and help create a safe space where people can talk about mental health as well.”
The girls believe that as a growing component in our lives, social media needs to be treated as one that can affect us in any way. “Social media is constantly changing and evolving. We believe that as technology evolves, social media is becoming part of our daily lives, and it can be beneficial to people but it can also affect them negatively.”
“There are studies that show how people who spend most of their time on social media are more prone to becoming depressed. One main cause of this is because people post their best “version” of themselves, while hiding the reality of their life, so viewers are influenced to believe that these people have a much better life than they do. Teenagers and young adults are constantly comparing themselves to others, which can be very harmful to their self-image and confidence.”
“While a lot of teens use social media to create friendships and keep in touch with society, they are also confronted with cyberbullying, toxic comparisons and less frequent face-to-face interactions. All of these can cause distress and are associated with symptoms of depression, anxiety and also elevate the risk of suicidal thoughts. So there always needs to be a balance, as not using social media at all can make one feel cut off from society, while spending excessive time on social media can cause harm to one’s mental health.”
What do you think of these students' message? You can visit byteofemotion’s blog to learn more!