Blog post #5

A few ways that others might try to manipulate you, and how to recognize it. The link below shows 25, different ways, but I will only be talking about a few. The first one is gaslighting, which is when the person you are talking to is trying to twist your reality and for you to start to doubt it. It will make you question if something actually happened or if someone said something. A very common one is “I never said that.” It is very simple, but it makes you question, did I hear them wrong? Another one is guilt-tripping, this is when someone will over exaggerate their situation to make others feel bad for them, and sometimes give them something extra or go easier on them because of it. This will play with your emotions and make you feel bad, or affect your perspective on the person on thing that they are talking about. The last one is flattery and charm, this one is when they give you a ton of complements, and will sugar coat everything to make you feel good and to gain your trust. This can cloud your judgement and will make you easier to manipulate. (1)

Answering this question will explain why or why not social media is good for our health, and what kind of content is beneficial, while what might not be. Just like everything else, each human is different, but there are similarities and patterns in beneficial things. I will explain how it might affect our mental and emotional health, and why it affects it so much. Mental health issues are heightened by social media use. This comprehensive study provides an overview of how social network use affects mental health. After applying a variety of inclusion and exclusion criteria, fifty papers were shortlisted from Google Scholar databases. Of these, sixteen papers were selected, and each paper underwent a quality assessment. There were eight cross-sectional studies, three longitudinal studies, two qualitative studies, and several systematic reviews among the publications. Anxiety and depression were the two mental health outcomes into which the findings were divided. Engaging in social media activities can positively impact the realm of mental health. Nonetheless, there are significant variations because of the cross-sectional design and sampling’s methodological constraints. Qualitative research and vertical cohort studies are necessary to further analyze the structure of social media influences on mental health. People now use social media on a daily basis; many of them spend hours a day on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and other well-known platforms. As a result, a large number of academics and researchers investigate how social media and its applications affect different facets of people’s lives. Furthermore, 3.484 billion people use social media globally in 2019, a 9% increase from the previous year. Figure 1 presents a statistical analysis of the gender distribution of global social media audiences by platform as of January 2020. It was discovered that while 61% of Snapchat users were male, only 38% of Twitter users were. Conversely, women were more likely to use Facebook and LinkedIn. It is undeniable that social media has grown to play a significant role in the lives of many people. Although social media offers a lot of fun and positive effects, it can also cause mental health issues. Prior studies indicated that gender, not age, determined mental health outcomes, with women significantly more likely than men to experience mental health issues. (2)

(2)

A state of mental health is characterized by an individual’s ability to recognize their own abilities, solve problems in daily life, function well at work, and significantly improve the lives of those around them. The positive and bad effects of social media on mental health are currently being discussed. Social networking is an essential component of mental health protection. Social relationship quantity and quality have an impact on mortality risk, health behaviour, mental and physical health, and overall well-being. The correlation between mental health and social media may be explained by the Displaced Behaviour Theory. The idea is that individuals who engage in sedentary activities like social media use more frequently have less time for in-person social interaction, which has been shown to be protective against mental health issues. Conversely, social theories have discovered that the use of social media has an impact on mental health by changing the way individuals perceive, manage, and engage with their social networks. Numerous research on the effects of social media have been done, and the results suggest that extended use of sites like Facebook may be linked to negative symptoms and indicators of stress, anxiety, and depression. Social media can also put a lot of pressure on users to conform to stereotypes that other people want to see and to be as popular as other users. In order to produce a warm and precise answer to the relevant research questions, systematic studies can identify, aggregate, and evaluate all available data in a quantitative and qualitative manner. Furthermore, a large number of systematic studies on mental health have been carried out globally. However, because the majority of the available literature concentrated primarily on medical science, only a small number of studies are conducted in the context of social science and integrated with social media. The possible connections between social media use and mental health have not received much attention because social media is still a relatively new phenomenon. (2)

Adults, gender, and preadolescents were the research topics covered in 16 of the selected research papers. The goal of this study was to conduct a systematic analysis of the body of research on the impact of social media use on mental health. This review discovered a general correlation between social media use and mental health problems, despite some inconsistent study results. Despite encouraging data supporting a connection between social media use and mental health, other reports have indicated the opposite. One earlier study, for instance, discovered no connection between depression and social media usage, nor between social media-related behaviors like the quantity of “selfies” or online friends used. Similarly, Neira and Barber discovered that although active social media use, or higher social media investment, predicted the occurrence of depressive symptoms in teenagers, there was no correlation between the frequency of social media use and depressed mood. Anxiety and depression were the most often measured outcomes across the 16 studies. The study’s main findings regarding risk factors for anxiety and depression included time spent on social media, activity, and addiction. Anxiety is one of the most common mental health issues in the modern world. Their uploaded videos and photos were liked and commented on by others. Nowadays, nobody is affected by the social media environment. Some teenagers have anxiety on social media because they fear losing their friends, which makes them try to reply to and frequently check all of their friends’ messages. Conversely, one of the unintended consequences of excessive use of social media is depression. In specifics, depression is restricted to Facebook and other social media platforms, leading to psychological issues. According to a recent study, people who use mobile phones, social media, games, texts, and other electronic devices frequently suffer from depression. In the previous study, those who used social media reported having 70% more depressive symptoms on their self-reports. Sex pleasure is the other social media influence that contributes to depression. Social media encourages maintaining a façade that emphasizes fun and excitement but withholds important details about our deeper struggles in day-to-day life, which is where the intimacy fun occurs. A study found a positive correlation between teenage depression and Facebook usage. More significantly, those who spent the majority of their time on social networking sites managing their online personas and engaging in online activities were found to have symptoms of major depression. Another study examined the variations in gender in the relationships between mental health and social media use. Compared to men, women were found to be more addicted to social media. Social media use that is passive, like reading posts, is more closely linked to depression than active use, like creating posts. Other significant conclusions from this review point to the possibility that variables other than social media usage frequency, such as interpersonal trust and family dynamics, may have a bigger impact on depressive symptoms. (2)

1.   Waqar Hasan, psychologist (05/01/2023), 25 Psychological Manipulation Techniques, retrieved from: 25 Psychological Manipulation Techniques – Psychologyorg
2. ¹ Psychology, California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences and Psychology, Fairfield, USA

   ² Business & Management, University Sultan Zainal Abidin, Terengganu, MYS

   ³ Family Medicine, California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences and Psychology, Fairfield, USA

   ⁴ Family Medicine, Lagos State Health Service Commission/Alimosho General Hospital, Lagos, NGA

   ⁵ Internal Medicine, California Institute of Behavioral Neurosciences and Psychology, Fairfield, USA

   Corresponding author.

   Fazida Karim (06/2022)

   How does social media affect mental health, retrieved from: Social Media Use and Its Connection to Mental Health: A Systematic Review – PMC (nih.gov)