Lately, I had been contemplating on my social media usage and mental health. I noticed myself being restless and anxious at times. I know what was happening and how to save myself from this, but I couldn’t take any action as I was stuck in this ‘Fear of missing out’ zone.
Thanks to the recent outage of social media apps – Instagram, Whatsapp & Facebook. I had been really happy that evening. I felt as if I got a new meaning to my life (not kidding!). However, this was short lived since they all were back after six hours. Sigh!
But it is interesting that there was a breath of fresh air during this downtime. It also made me realize a bunch of things which I can take action on. May be if the downtime was a bit shorter, I wouldn’t have even thought about this.
I came across an article on WSJ and I felt like throwing my mobile after reading it. It was about how Instagram is toxic for the teens and that Facebook knows about it. Quite scary!
Here is a glimpse of one such research results on teens:
What is the need of the hour is to contemplate on our requirement to be on the platform & time spent on such apps. Unless the user is a celebrity or promoting a business, the need to be on the app for long hours each day creates adverse effect and in long run leads to depression.
So what is the way out you think? If users move out from the above platforms, they would potentially seek refuge in some other social media platform. This seems like an endless game until we are aware of what is presented to us and how toxic it can turn if we overused it. After all, its our game and we can end it if we want to!
Peace.
P.S : Interested to read the referenced WSJ article? Here is the link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739?commentId=ef8c17f5-3501-458b-afb8-169f94169aee
Aishwarya Bhargav 