The Role of Social Media in Anxiety Disorder Progress

Disport or Dependency ?

I always wonder what does the thin line hold that divides excessive use of social media for “passing time” from actual clinical dependency? I often wonder if I am not dependent on my social media accounts why does the frustration and anxiety kicks in once I uninstall the applications for so called “digital detox” ? I often wonder why I aimlessly scroll through Instagram when I barely remember the last post seen?

I often wonder whether  or not the disport is slowly creeping into dependency…

For those you are not quite sure about the word “dependency “ dependency technically means reliance, a more stronger synonym would be “a need for” or “ clinging to” . It is often used in sentences such as “substance dependency”, “drug dependency” . Dependency is usually perceived to be a serve problem which stems from substance “use”. Here the substance is usually referred to alcohol, drugs and more. However , don’t you think the effects of “social media” is no different from such substances?

Think for yourself, can you live without Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat? Can you live a satisfied life knowing that only 10 people have liked your posts? Can you limit and control the amount of time you spend on social media consciously ? Although we have updates in our phone that actually tells us our maximum time limit, how many of you can keep the phone down once the limit is exceeded ? And how many of you press the cancel button and keep scrolling?

There is no big news when I say social media has progressed anxiety in the greater population. In fact the social media creators and designers use psychology to entice you to use their specific applications, isn’t that enough proof of potential “addictive symptoms”? I mean knowing that there is a brilliant team working on all the tricks possible to keep you glued to your screen isn’t enough of reason to stop the use of social media immediately?

Furthermore, people with stronger anxious tendencies are more likely to be pulled in my social media as a form of escape from their fret.the withdrawal effects(which is discussed later) at times act as a seductive function for anxious people.  Studies suggest that digital world is known to replace stressors with other stressors rather than reducing stressors, this simply adds on to the anxiety. For example, anxious individuals or non anxious individuals both are more likely to induce in social comparisons on social media. The applications are designed in a way to encourage such comparisons, such as number of likes, comments, followers, friends. It forces us to reduce our self worth to a the number of friends we possess compared to other people.

Thus, the anxious individuals are caught up in the vicious cycle of new anxieties and in turn more susceptible to negative reacts of anxiety and stressors.

Studies show that such highly anxious individuals, on their return to social media, apparently show an increased tendency to engage in alcohol consumption when posting.  This alcohol consumption will also increase anxieties and depression in the longer term.  Such unhealthy behaviours have already been noted in heavy internet users, in addition to poor mental health, and these will promote poor physical health, which has been associated with heavy internet use.  These negative effects on the individual will also cause more internet-use driving anxiety, and drinking will tend to produce unfortunate and inappropriate behaviours online(1).

What is it if not systematic hypnotising ?

To begin with, “teenage anxiety” a much talked about and inevitable topic. Something that none of the past generations experienced. As if the phone is an extension of the hands of this generation, we are constantly looking at it, while studying,  cooking, socialising, playing, even while writing blogs . *chuckles*

We want to know it all. We want it all. And how do we cope up when we don’t get what we want? Well, we hardly do.

1. Fear Of Missing Out

This brings in the most widely used hashtag #FOMO fear of missing out, teenage anxiety does revolve around this. Fear of missing out leads to the build up of anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, it is often triggered by posts seen on social media.  There is no escaping from what did your friends eat at a dinner party you could not attend or who your ex is currently dating.

A recent study on Motivation and Emotion at Carleton and McGill University investigated the social-psychological basis of FOMO.  Results showed that people who had chores like cooking and studying to do instead of attending the party experienced a greater level of FOMO. It was also associated with the predicted negative outcomes, such as fatigue, stress, sleep problems, and psychosomatic symptoms. More importantly,  the personality findings suggested that FOMO is not predicted by neuroticism or extraversion instead it’s felt by all the personalities regardless of their temperament (2). At least FOMO crisis affects everyone equally!

FOMO is a strong anxiety- driving force in the whole population especially in teenagers. Precisely, FOMO could be categorised  as an anxiety caused by  being disconnected from digital resources, like social media. At times you must have unknowingly experienced it too for example, getting agitated in a remote hotel due to no signal or when you are trapped in conversations with your relatives and you can not look at your screen or check messages.

Additionally, FOMO can have more layers than we think.  The main types of FOMO include: missing out on popularity; missing out on information; missing out on social group interactions for example If you’re not up-to-date on the latest social media posts, it may prevent you from feeling like you can participate in real-life conversations at school the next day, Yes! We all are guilty of this,  and missing out on the chance to prevent negative comments about the ourselves by others.  All of which will shoot up  anxieties like never before. Which one have you experienced ?

With increased dependency as well as awareness many people tend to go for the “digital detox” .

The most common symptoms faced by people when they stop the use of social media are:-

1. Fatigue
2. Body pain
3. High level of anxiety
4. Body temperature
5. uncertainty
6. Butterflies in the stomach
7. Cold feet
8. Numbness
9. Agitation
10. Frustration
11. Overthinking
12. Aimlessness
13. cravings
14. loss of control
15. loss of sleep

This brings us to other significant aspect that is called “Withdrawal anxiety”.

2. Withdrawal Anxiety 

Let’s be honest, I had so many instances where I was literally fed up of my uncontrollable use of social media that I uninstalled the applications and just moments later installed it again.

If I made an independent decision of coming out of the social media web, what traps me into it again? It’s definitely the emotions, the attachment  you and I develop with the applications, the feeling of appreciation and affiliation holds you back. It is indeed like that toxic parent who just won’t let their child live on their own. In turn, the child thinks that maybe I am incapable of living on my own and tends to live off their parent’s terms. Whether it is the child’s faulty thinking or the parent’s faulty attachment, we know for sure that the relationship is pretty “toxic”.

An Austrian research published in the International Journal shows that a seven-day break from social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp is not only sufficient to induce withdrawal symptoms like those caused by addictive substances but also identifies classic withdrawal symptoms, including significantly increased urges, boredom, and an influence on whether the subjects were in a good or bad mood. The researchers highlighted that not all participants could even go one week without “relapsing” and using social media- 90 out of the 152 participants ended up using social media at some point during the study.

More significantly,  there was a sharp increase in the desire — the craving — to use social media during the period of abstinence.the effect was measurable when the subjects were allowed to use social media once again. To add on, this feeling of peer pressure worsened the withdrawal symptoms(3).

3. Chronic Stress and Burnout

Stress one of the major anxiety causing stimuli. How stressed have you been lately?

Sometimes social media can be our escape from internal and external stressors.

Covid-19 is one of the most uncertain and stress causing situation we all are experiencing. And the only escape is “social media” it drives us crazy yet keeps us sane. So, cheers to all the hastages that pushed us to do exciting things like #helpyourmomchallenge #5opushupchallenge #cleanyourownbathroomchallege and it goes own.

However, social media is responsible to bring new stressors in our life. According to a recent 2015 study conducted by Amanda Lenhart conveys that : seeing events where you are uninvited, the pressure to post attractive and in the perceived ideal shape photos, the pressure of receiving positive comments and more likes, as well as someone posting something about you which is out of your control – all of such scenarios act as real stressors in our lives on day to day basis.

On one hand, social media is thought to diminish the distance between people . On the other hand, social media has ended up diminishing the real distance and expanding the emotional distance between people. When youngsters were asked about their reactions to digital stressors most of them quoted – “ feeling replaceable “, “communication fatigue”, passing fast judgments” “attachment to their devices” , people have merged their concept of privacy and devices into one.

We all are in this together yet we are working against each other. Most of us are guilty of reducing the standards of beauty, uniqueness, intelligence on social media into one rigid framework.

Moving on,  the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that burnout is an occupational phenomenon “resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” Characteristics of burnout include “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job and reduced professional efficacy”(4).

If looked closely, we all our facing burnouts from social media leading to higher levels on stress and anxiety in our personal and professional lives.

Are you unable to log off the devices even when you know there isn’t any important messages for you? Do you constantly shift between applications in a hope to find something interesting? Do you keep checking your phone even when you are with your friends or family just so you don’t miss anything out on social media? Are you hesitant to keep the phone away at nights? If so, there is a high risk of burnout. Don’t worry , you are definitely not alone.

Nonetheless, there is a ray of hope because in defence to the common assumption that long-term, habitual use can take a negative toll, particularly on young people a study by Harvard University, suggests that as long as people are mindful users of social media, strong social networks are associated with positive mental health and well-being(5).

Therefore, the ways in which people use their social media handle tends to have a greater influence of their respective mental health status than the frequency and duration of their use.

Some of the other anxiety causing reasons on social media could be :

4. Cyberbullies

Nowadays children are exposed to social media at an early age lets say 10 years or at times even earlier than that. When such young minds divide into the lucrative and attractive ocean of social media we seldom forget about the sharks that are in the deep sea waiting for baits. Which increased awareness and campaigns over the past years our cyber crime branches all over the world has build up stronger walls to protect us all. However, at times the sharks tend to find their way.

Cybercrime and cyberbullying in not necessarily done by unknown people sometimes its the one in our own class sometimes is the school acquaintance passing negative judgments on your posts. We need to learn and train ourselves to spot the bullies and “block” them where possible and thankfully on social media it is possible.

There are no second chances on social media.

5. False Friends

False friends or often known as “pretend friends” for the sake of a captivating picture and more likes pretend friends pose in a matter that they know each other from ages. We see it all the time, don’t we?

What we usually forget while scrolling is the fact that most of the pictures are “STAGED” just for likes and reactions.

6. A Gallery Play

To act in a way that people like and get to like you. It is very common on social media. From the types of poses to types of captions we all are guilty of imitating our “influencers”, “ actors” and famous personalities in order to be more like them. To be liked by people the way they are liked.

How To Deal With This Dependency?

Well, first no extreme ways such as 15 days of no use will help you in long run. In order to sustain your lifestyle and make social media your ally you need to start “using it” rather than “abusing it” by making sure that you are the one controlling social media and its not otherwise.

Ask yourself questions like do I really wan to spend 30-50 minutes of my life scrolling through Instagram or do I have some hobbies to pursue like painting, singing, cooking and more.

Cut down on time limit rather than restricting your self to 50 minutes of screen time, try compressing you habits in a way that you will hardly have time to look at the phone.

You can add a few lifestyle changes that will take you long way such as:

1. Don’t see your phone first thing in the morning. Open your phone after a minimum of 2 hrs after getting up. Initially I did feel anxious what if I’m missing out on anything? College notices? New friend’s post ? Mails? What not. But you know it that it’s just a way to get you on social media.
2. Don’t use your phone for at least one hour before going to sleep.
3. Start with your hobbies like writing, staring at the sky, dancing, singing or  talking with your family. I tried sculpting for a bit it kept me occupied for 5 hours straight and I didn’t even think of social media. So,  find a new hobby!

In the end, you are more than your reel self on social media, and your life is more than your Instagram stories. You are more than the artificial and unattainable beauty standards set by the commercials.

You are more than the social media labels.

To conclude, whether disport or dependency, what matters the most is your irresistible and assiduous urge to build your self control. The thin fragile line that divides the both holds nothing but your thoughts, your thoughts about yourself, your self concept, your self love, your self esteem and mainly your self worth. don’t let the pillars of your self concept fall apart because of some random social media post or comment or due to the spiralling hell of social comparisons.

Fritz Perls once quoted ” Anxiety is the gap between now and later.”

Some of the best ways to ground yourself to the reality of “now”, is by practicing mindfulness, meditation, journaling, reflecting on our actions, simple breathing exercises, active visualisation. If you think you are drifted to the “Dependency” side, there is nothing to worry about, a simple step such as reaching out to a therapist and discussing the matter will solve problems  more than we can imagine.