Impact of Social Media on Mental Health

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs register@allceus.com counselortoolbox you I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation on the impact of social media on mental health. I am Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Today we're going to examine the extent of social media use. How many people really are using the Internet and what does social media, what is it comprised of? We'll explore the positive and negative impacts of social media on mental and physical health and we'll identify some resiliency factors that we can help people develop. So if they have to engage in social media for work related things or for whatever reason, they can avoid the negative aspects of it in addition to benefiting from the positive aspects. What the research tells us Interestingly enough, the research is really pretty ambiguous about the impact of social media on mental health. Part of the reason for that is they're not sure whether people with mental health issues gravitate more towards social media or whether social media causes mental health issues. So there is a lot of debate about how much of a villain, if you will, social media really is. And those of us who are on social media can definitely attest to the fact that if you're on it a lot or if you have multiple accounts you've got to manage or you know, there are a variety of things it can be a toxic place to be, but just about anywhere in real life or online can be a toxic place to be at certain times. These are the things we want to start thinking about. So what does the research tell us? Well, the number of social media accounts is moderately correlated, so it's not definitely not a one to one moderately correlated with inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, od, anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as fear of missing out and loneliness. Let's look at each one of those a little bit. If you have a person who has pre existing hyperactivity, impulsivity, difficulty with attention, add sort of symptoms, it's not necessarily unheard of for them to be seeking out stimulation online. And when they go on one social media platform and they're not getting feedback and they're not getting interaction, very quickly switching to another social media platform to try to get feedback and interaction and if it doesn't happen they're going to another one. A lot of our social media platforms are have rolling news feeds if you will, and if those news feeds are not changing or they're seeing the same stuff, different day, they may get bored and switch over. It's definitely possible that someone with those tendencies would tend to create more social media accounts. Can social media create these symptoms? Well, if you're worried about what people are saying or what's going on online, whether you're worried about whether somebody else is getting more attention than you are, if you are preoccupied with what's going on in social media, then sure it can increase in attention online. We typically are more impulsive and more disinhibited than we are in real life. So you might see more impulsivity online. It can go both ways. Oppositional defiant disorder. Somebody who is has oppositional defiant disorder may tend to get on social media to be snarky with other people. I have a friend who will intentionally get online just to go troll other people and that I don't understand that, but that's that person's prerogative, I guess. People who have existing oppositional defiant disorder, antisocial personality disorder, anything in that area tend to like to have a lot of control, tend to like to be the center of attention and be able to manipulate others. Well, people are really easily manipulated online. Likewise, if you're online for too, too long, if you're spending a lot of time in these social media, social networking platforms, then you're going to often find that people start to lack empathy. They get. Either they get burned out or they start becoming more cynical. There are. You can see changes in people's behavior, whether it causes odd. You know, I think that would be a stretch, but we do see more people with ODD having more accounts, anxiety and depressive symptoms. We're really going to focus on that throughout the whole presentation. So I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time on it. Except to say if someone has mood symptoms, then they may be more likely to go on to social media in order to, to find distraction or support. Likewise, being on social media can cause, can precipitate depressive or anxious symptoms in just about anybody based on what kind of news they're being fed, what they're seeing in their feed, and fear of missing out a lot of times. Well, I won't even say that. When people who have this fear of missing out are not able to connect with the Internet, then they may be concerned that they're going to miss an announcement, a notification. Hence they may create multiple accounts so they make sure they're not missing anything. I know in my. Particular is. Having to belong to multiple groups on Facebook and multiple groups on LinkedIn in order to try to reach all of the people that I'm trying to reach, we can consider, you know, the number of social media accounts, but we also want to look at, even if they only have one social media account and that's Facebook, how many different groups are they in and how many different people are they engaging with and or expecting support and feedback from? Internet use in general significantly affects participation in real life experiences. If you are getting your needs met online, then you may not venture out, you may not call up your real life friends and go, hey, let's go hiking or let's go get coffee. People who spend a lot of time online tend to reduce their communication with family members and may reduce their social real life social circle. Chicken egg dilemma. Again, did the person turn to social media because they didn't have adequate social supports where they were, or did they spend so much time on social media that they lost their social support because those relationships weren't nurtured? We see both things. We also see that people who spend a lot of time online have a reduction in sleep and a reduction in sleep quality. There are three primary reasons for this. Number one, probably the easiest one to remedy is blue light. If people are online and engaging in social media two hours or less before bed, then the blue light that they're getting from their computer screen or their tablet is messing with the parts of their brain that trigger the relaxation and sleep response. In order to prevent that problem, we want to encourage people within two hours of bedtime to start using a blue light filter on their mobile devices and on their televisions. You can get blue light devices or blue light blockers that you plug in to your television that can also block the blue light. I know that has nothing to do with social media, but it is a source of blue light. Blue light is one reason that people who engage in social media may have a reduction in sleep. The two other factors that are probably more prominent. The first one, people may get online after work, they come home, they eat dinner, they watch a TV show or something, they get into bed and they're like, hey, I will just go to my social media account and scroll through my feed and see what's been going on and catch up with the social news of the day. That is not, you know, necessarily harmful in itself. However, when people get online, a lot of times they intend to get online, peruse their newsfeed and get off and spend 20 minutes doing it. And the next thing they know, they've been online for two hours and is an hour and a half past when they intended to go to bed. The third cause of sleep reduction because of social media is activation of the stress response. People can get online and they can start perusing that newsfeed or looking at their friends, news accounts or news feeds or whatever they're called on the different social media platforms. And if they see something that upsets them, it gets them angry, it makes them feel rejected, it upsets them in any way that kicks off the body stress response, the HPA axis, which causes the brain to secrete a whole bunch of stimulating fight or flight neurochemicals, which automatically shuts down that sleep response. It says, okay, melatonin, go away, serotonin go away. It is time to fight or flee. If that happens or when that happens, because it does happen, then it's going to take that person that much longer to wind down and get to sleep. And a lot of times that stress reaction also triggers perseveration. They start thinking about what that person said and every time they lay down and start to go to sleep, whatever it was that upset them, they start thinking about it again, which reduces sleep. So the three causes of sleep, blue light, extended time online, and activation of that stress response close to the sleep hour. People who spend more time online also have increased feelings of depression and loneliness. Why is that? Some people get online because they don't have an adequate real life social circle and it may make them, they may be seeking ways to start feeling better when people get online. And I'm going to talk about this multiple times today because it is so important to drive home to our clients and ourselves. If you're not aware of it, social media uses algorithms to decide for itself what it's going to let you see. Therefore you may have a thousand friends on any Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or wherever. Of those thousand people, about 20% on at least one platform, I know it's about 20% may have the option of seeing anything you post. So the other 80% are oblivious to the fact that you posted. Unless they specifically go to your page and look at what you posted, it's not going to show up in their newsfeed. So you have a thousand friends, 200 have the opportunity to maybe see it. Of those 200, how many of them actually see it? When they open their social media account within the first few posts of their news feed, a lot of times it's already scrolled off for them. And unless they are reading in depth in their news feed, they may never get down to that post. So of the 20% of the 200 people that may have had the option to see it. It's probably only 1 to 5% of the people who had the. Who, sorry, who a person is connected with who will actually see the post. I see a lot of people online getting really upset. They're like, I have a thousand friends or 2000 friends, and I asked for support or I asked for guidance or I did this or did that, and nobody liked my post. Nobody gave me feedback. Well, you know what? They may not have seen it. You've got a figure of that thousand at best. 200 had a chance to see it. And a lot of people don't have a thousand friends on Facebook. And the more strangers you're connected with on Facebook, the more people you don't have a deep connection with, the more likely it is that you're not going to get feedback. You know, people that we have a deep connection with, we may go in and mark their account so we make sure to see their posts first. But if one of our other friends happened to have a very verbose posting day, we may not see everybody's post before we decide, you know, it's time for me to get offline. Nothing personal. Why did I go through that diatribe? Because when people post and they expect their friends to see it and they're thinking, well, a thousand people had the opportunity to see this and nobody liked it, that can contribute to feelings of depression and isolation. Helping them see in hard figures the proportion of people who even had an option to respond can help decrease a sense of helplessness and loneliness and isolation. To the extent that they realize that people weren't ignoring them or being mean, they just didn't see it. There are ways around that. Instead of posting on your newsfeed and hoping it gets fed to somebody and hoping that your connections see it. Join groups in groups, everybody sees or everybody has the opportunity to see every post that's made. So that if you go into a group that's maybe the depression support group, then everybody who logs into the depression support group has the ability to scroll through every post that day and see and comment on them if they want to. Which brings us to want, if, and most people are, if you are members, a member of multiple groups, sometimes you just don't have it in you at the end of the day to go through and check every single group. And if you have even 500 friends, you probably don't have it in you to go check each one of their social media pages in order to make sure that they're okay. This is important to remember. Social media gives us this false feeling that everybody is seeing what we're putting out there and we're putting it out there and then when we don't get a response, we feel depressed. The other reason we see an increase in depression is just the algorithm that controls what we see. Do a lot of animal rescue. So if I happen to see a post come by where there's an animal somewhere that is in a shelter that needs to find a forever home, I'm going to like and share that post. As soon as I do that, my feed seems to become nothing but various shelters that have these poor abandoned animals. And I get online and I get so depressed I'm like, oh my gosh, that's awful. Or if I have a friend who posts that they had a tragedy in their life and I post a comment of support and you know, put the little heart symbol for sending feelings of love or whatever I'm doing. Again, the algorithm says, well, she passed by all these other posts, she didn't care about these. But this post about somebody's grief she paid attention to. So let's show her more posts about people's grief. And I'm like, really? I tend to see posts of people and not like or comment on them because I don't want to continually see upsetting, just disruptive posts on my, on my feed. Now if I see somebody has suffered a tragedy, I may private message them. But in order to prevent only seeing drama on my newsfeed, I tend to be very, very selective about what I like and share because I don't want those algorithms just constantly serving me unhappy stuff. Research also tells us that people spend the majority of their time on social networking sites looking at their peers profiles and photos rather than posting or updating their own profiles. When we get online, we tend to be more involved instead of sharing about ourselves, finding out what's going on in other people's lives, kind of being that nosy neighbor like Mrs. Gladys from Bewitched and comparing ourselves to how other people are doing. Now the interesting thing about this is that a lot of people not going to go on social media and post everything, the good and the bad. If they have something good, they may share it on social media. If they have something bad, they may not. Especially if it's just a random, you know, I had a really bad day, my car broke down. You know, those sorts of stressors that we all experience. A lot of people don't see that as noteworthy to post online. So when you look at their news feed, when you look at their profile, it looks like they have, you know, the best life. Nothing bad ever happens to them and that is a falsehood. They are just not sharing everything that happens. They're sharing the stuff that they think people want to hear. When we look at people's profiles and it seems like nothing bad happens to them and we know that bad stuff happens to us, that can contribute to feelings of jealousy, anger, resentment and depression. Computer mediated communication may lead to the mistaken impressions about people's physical appearance, educational level, success, intelligence, integrity and other people's general happiness, which increases depression. A lot of us when we post pictures online, use filters and when we post our pictures we go through and edit them and we may take the same picture 15 times to get the right angle. When you take your own selfie and you see it, you're like, oh no, no, no, no, that is not going public. But you assume, a lot of us assume have a faulty assumption that other people aren't doing the same thing and they are, you know, I've seen my daughter do it. She will take, you know, multiple pictures and then she will pick one that is presentable for online. Most people, when you look at their profile, even if they have a lot of awesome pictures, you know, how many pictures did they have to take to get each one of those? We want to make sure we're putting perspective into it and eliminating some of those cognitive distortions. Constant self evaluation and competition with other users incorrectly perceiving characteristics of them may increase feelings of jealousy. On the other side, if you're looking at your friends profiles and heaven forbid they're all talking about, or most of them are talking about how awful things are, you may look at what's going on in their life and go, oh, I got it pretty good. But most of the time it doesn't happen that way. Most of the time when you look at other people's profiles, you're seeing the cherry picked information that they want to brag about that they want to share with others. Technology based social comparison and feedback seeking is found to be associated with depressive symptoms. When comparing for a whole bunch of other variables including real life excessive reassurance seeking. People who get online and start comparing themselves to others and just really seeking feedback, they need people to tell them you're okay, they need the likes. If they don't get likes on their, on their posts, they get, they become very dysphoric. That type of behavior is associated with stronger depressive symptoms. Additionally and remember that explanation of the logarithms that I gave you before, stronger associations exist between social comparison and feedback seeking and depressive symptoms for unpopular individuals. Well, what makes somebody unpopular? As I said earlier, if you have a thousand, and I'm going to use the word connections on social media platform, and maybe you, 10 of them are family and another 20 of them, you know, from school, but the other 970 of them you don't, you've never met from and wouldn't recognize from Adam's house cat if you walked into them in a restaurant or walked up to them in a restaurant. Okay? So when that situation occurs and you post something and nobody provides feedback or very little feedback, you may get one like, or something. People take it personally because they're like, I've got a thousand connections and nobody responded. Well, even of those, even of the 200 that may have had the option to see it, you know, maybe only one or two people who you're really, who you really have a strong emotional connection with, social connection with, actually saw the post. Making sure that people understand popularity is not necessarily about numbers. You can have 5,000 connections and, you know, appear to be very popular, but who really Responds? I have 5,000 connections and I rarely get comments on my posts and stuff. Maybe, you know, I posted one about a lost dog the other day And I got 11 people that responded, commented, liked, whatever, on it out of 5,000. Now, am I going to take that as me being unpopular or get depressed about it? No, I'm, you know, going to look at the options and go, well, maybe people didn't see it. Maybe they were too occupied with things that were going on in real life to even be on Facebook. There are a lot of reasons why I might not have gotten a lot of likes for that. Social networking sites may increase fear of missing out because as a society, we have become so used to being in the know all the time. You know, you don't have to wait for the Sunday paper to come out with the calendar of activities. You can go on online at any point in time and find out about activities. You can go online and find out how people are doing. And that goes back to that newsfeed. That newsfeed. As stuff scrolls off, you may not see it again, which can increase fear of missing out. What if I'm not looking at my newsfeed and somebody posts something important and I don't see it? Well, you don't see it. People who have fear of missing out, that increases their anxiety tenfold that they think, you know, if something's important and they miss it, then there are going to be drastic consequences. And I encourage people on both sides of that conversation to be realistic. If there is something that's that vitally important, send people a private message or something so you know that they're getting that information. Don't expect that they have even been served that message by the powers that be and don't expect that they even saw that message. It's important. Just like in the olden days when we used to pick up the hard telephone and call somebody and leave a message on the answering machine. For those of you who are old enough to remember answering machines voicemail now when we do that, we know that there's a pretty good chance that they got the message. If you just put something in your newsfeed on social media, there's a pretty good chance that the people that you wanted to see it, didn't see it. Technology based social networking also allows for unhealthy perseveration. In the olden days before the Internet, if you broke up with somebody, yeah, you may still have some of the same friends still, but you were not bombarded with reminders of that person 24, seven if you will. Additionally, in, in the olden days, if you wanted to stalk somebody, not that I'm saying you should ever do that, but if a person was determined to stalk somebody and figure out, okay, who are they seeing now? What are they doing, yada yada, they would have to drive by that person's place of work, they would have to drive by that person's house. And most people can step back and logically see that, okay, that is unhealthy behavior. You know, that is stalking. In some states that's illegal behavior. Recognize that that's unhealthy, unwise, yada yada, Online, you can do it from your bedroom in your pajamas, you can go to somebody's Instagram, feed their Snapchat, their Facebook, their whatever social media they're on and see what they're saying and what they're doing and who they're talking to and what they're liking. And it allows people to continue to perseverate and cyber stalk people whom they are no longer in relationships with. So social media does have its downsides. What are some of the upsides? Research has shown that there are some upsides to social media. You can easily reach millions of people with information to improve their health, literacy or give them information about something like the upcoming elections, whatever it is. How do you do that? Well, putting it on your newsfeed, putting it on in your profile, that's probably not going to do it because we know that only a very small, small percentage of people who you're friends with or connected to are ever going to see that. How do you get around that? Pages and groups Like I said earlier, if you belong to the depression support group, for example, or maybe you're the manager of the depression support group and you want to share information about sleep hygiene to the people in your depression support group, you can post a post about that and people will see that if they come come to your group, they have to subscribe in order to show their interest or join or whatever they call it on the different platforms. We know they're interested. So when they come, which may be today, it may be two weeks from now, but when they come, they will have the opportunity to scroll and eventually see that post if they want to that bad, it's definitely available to them. It's just up to them to come to the group and to scroll to read about it. With these posts, if you're trying to reach people and increase their knowledge about something or increase their engagement about something, it's better to do multiple smaller posts frequently and schedule them so they are regularly posting in that group. Label them as like part one, part two, part three, part four. So people know, oh there's more down here, I just need to, I need to keep looking and they can find that information. We are also a chunk based society anymore. People are less likely to read something that is two pages long and much more likely to read something that can be fit in a Twitter message. Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it to the point and make multiple smaller posts. Social media can increase health related behaviors through gamification and social support. I wear a fitness tracker and it's by Garmin. Not advertising for Garmin. I just happen to know that product and Garmin has forums that you can support one another. You can create competitions. There are a lot of things that you can do if you're into fitness and you want that kind of social support. I'm very competitive so I'm all over it. Bodybuilding.com is another place if you are into bodybuilding, if you want feedback about your routine or help designing routine or just moral support on those days that you know you really don't feel like going to the gym. Bodybuilding.com is one of those social networking sites that you can go to. SparkPeople is another one that I've used. Again, not advertising for any of these for any reason. Just telling you ones I've used. And I know there are thousands of others like them out there. But Spark People allows you in one area to keep track. Keep a nutrition diary and keep track of what you're eating and your exercise. But there's a whole nother area for social support. People who have been dieting for a while and lost, you know, a bunch of weight a lot of times will post pictures and they get feedback and support from the group. Other people who've put weight back on can post and they get moral support from the group because most of us have been there, and it's a great place for that particular type of communication. Now, I'm not talking about the dating sites. I'm not talking about Tinder or, oh, what are some of the others? Plenty of fish or any of them. I can't think of the names of them right now because those don't really allow for asynchronous interaction. They do allow for chat, but that's just a whole different ball game if you're trying to date. What we're talking about today is really your friends and professional social networking. Social networking allows the potential for screening and early identification of problems. And I have on here BigBrother, because I'm not sure how I feel about it. They have created algorithms that can read every post that you put out there. And if their algorithm hits on it, indicating that you might be at risk for suicide or homicidal behavior, then actions are taken accordingly. Not sure how I feel about that, because there's a lot of things that you can put out there that might accidentally get flagged, and there's a lot of false positives. By the same token, you don't want people to feel like they can get online and post something inflammatory intended to get caught by these algorithms. And if it gets missed, then they end up harming themselves or someone else, and they're like, well, I put it out there and you guys had a chance to stop me. No, we don't want to do that. We don't want to expect that the algorithms or our connections are even going to see what we put on social media. And yes, I know that that's a little bit disheartening, but it is what it is. Think about how many connections you have. If you had them in real life, maybe you've got 500 connections on Facebook. Would you call all 500 people every single day? Would you even call all 500 people at least once a week? Probably not. You wouldn't do anything but spend time on the phone. Social media sets expectations for us to pay attention to others that are just not realistic. And we need to help people recognize that. You're going to have your select group of friends, you know, probably 10 or 15, like you would in real life, that are going to check your Facebook page or your social media page and note what's going on in your life and be really invested. But the other, you know, thousand or two thousand or whatever it is, they may have a different 15 or 20 people that they're checking in on. And while you're acquainted, maybe you have some similar interests. They, they don't have the time or the energy to go to every single person's page and check up on them or notice when the last time it was that they posted. Another interesting benefit of social media, if you use it in counseling, and I mean this by having a client come in and show you their social media profile. Don't friend your clients on social media. Really bad idea, unethical in a lot of ways, yada, yada yada. What I'm saying is have them come in and show you what their social media looks like so you can see how they're interacting with others, what they respond to, how they respond to adversity, etc. And that will give you some talking points for how they deal with conflict, confrontation, how effective their communication is online. And then you can draw parallels and see if they exhibit the same behavior in real life. And if so, you can make modifications as needed and if not, then you can start looking at why is your behavior different in one place versus the other, which one is more helpful, etc. The final benefit of social media is the fact that it can increase communication with real life friends at a distance. As I said, I have 5,000 connections on one of my social media platforms and 4,800 of them probably wouldn't recognize we share ideas, we share interests in common. You know, I used to raise angora rabbits, so I'm, you know, have connections with some angora rabbit people. I have a lot of connections with animal rescue people. I wouldn't consider them friends. They are associates, they are acquaintances, you know, great people. But I wouldn't expect them, them to drop what they're doing if I post online that I'm having a bad day and they saw it. However, for the, we'll say 30 people that are there that are real life friends, you know, my friends from college who are still back in Florida, it gives me the opportunity to communicate with them in a way that the phone doesn't One of my best friends had a little boy a couple of years ago and I've been able to communicate with her, but also literally see her little boy grow up. Old fashioned phones, you couldn't see anything. And with digital pictures, it's so much easier now because we can, in the middle of a conversation, share pictures of our kids or our animals. And it's much more interactive, even more so than, you know, back before social media when we used to try to send email attachments with pictures, you know, that's still asynchronous. Social media gives the, gives us the opportunity for synchronous communication with people that we care about who don't happen to be in our same geographic location. I told you we would talk about resiliency factors and some of these factors are resiliency factors for online and offline behavior alike. But what are they? Real life support. That is really important. And as I said earlier just a minute ago, it doesn't necessarily have to be somebody who lives 10 miles away. It can be your best friend from college who lives in the middle of Florida. But those are people who, you know in real life, you could call them on the phone, you could send them a text message, you could. Do you have enough of a connection with them? It's a personal connection, you know, about each other as opposed to, you know, somebody that you friended from another group. People who have higher self esteem tend to spend less time comparing themselves to others and letting that harp on their self esteem. People who generally have a sense of belonging already can have the benefit of getting online and not worrying about what other people say or if there's a feeling of rejection. But this, you know, is also a resiliency factor when you're online. There are some people, maybe a person who is lgbt, lgbtq, lgbtq, happens to live in an area where that is still not accepted and they find that they feel very isolated where they are. They can get online and there are groups online in the different social media sites that are comprised of other people who are lgbtq and they can find sense of belonging in that group. Even if it's just, even if it is just an online group, they share a connection and that sense of belonging is really important. Self awareness. If you are aware of how you feel and why you're getting on social media, if you know you're getting on there in order to get validation to make yourself feel better, well then you may want to think about, you know, what other methods are available. Self awareness helps you realize what do I hope to get out of this is this activity. Is getting on social media beneficial to my mental health or counterproductive? Effective communication skills can be very helpful online and offline. But online there is no visual that people can see. There are no non verbals. A lot of things, especially if they are not communicated very clearly, can be misconstrued. Effective communication skills helps people prevent some of that backlash, but also be able to state their feelings, wants and needs. Psychological flexibility is a tool that's great to help people develop resiliency. If they get online and there's something that really upsets, they can accept the fact that you know what I got online, I saw that, I read that that person's trolling me, whatever, and it makes me angry. Accept is what it is. I am feeling angry. And then with psychological flexibility, the person decides what's the next step for me to take. What is going to help me use my energy in a productive way to make myself happy versus in a counterproductive way to continue to try to argue with someone or get get back or get revenge. People who have alternate sources of validation tend to do better online. If their only validation comes from the number of likes that they get, then they are at high risk for for a lot of disappointment and heartache. If they have other sources of validation like success at work and friends in real life and family, however they define it that is supportive, then they tend to do better online. Understanding the algorithms on social networking sites so they understand that not everybody. Matter of fact, most of the people that they are connected with are not ever even going to have a chance to see their message can help. A lot of people accept when they're not getting the number of likes that they want or feedback that they want. And as I said earlier, fewer stranger connections. When I'm connected with somebody that I know that I have a relationship with, even if it is a distance relationship, but we have been maybe chatting for 18 months and we know a lot about each other. I'm going to respond more strongly to their stuff versus somebody who I happen to be connected with just because we're in the same profession. Social media factors that influence depression and anxiety include the number of likes your posts get. And I will tell you, I fall victim to this just as easily as other people and I have to stop myself and go, okay, you know, let's think logically about this. But the number of likes people get on any particular post can make them feel more or less appreciated and paid attention to whether it appears that other people are happier more successful or more popular or also affects people's mood. If I look and it seems like all my friends are happier, more successful and more popular, then I may feel hopeless and helpless or resentful. Check ins during extended absences are also another sort of passive aggressive way to elicit attention. And I've seen many people disappear for two weeks or three weeks or something. You know, I wasn't keeping track and get very upset when they came back and they hadn't been online for three weeks and nobody had checked in on them to go, hey, I haven't seen you post, where have you been? Yada yada. Well, how many people actually had a so little going on in their post in their feed that they noticed that person was missing or, and, or you know, how many people that they're connected to actually go to your page every day to check in and see how you're doing. I have one friend who will disappear for periods of time and if I'm wondering, you know, what's going on with them, I will go to their page and check in on them. But I can't do that for 5,000 people. I can barely do that for the, you know, 30 really close friends that I have comments on. Our posts on our pictures can also affect people's mood. If they are supportive, great, that's helpful. If they are flaming or disinhibited or trolling, whatever word you want to use, they're nasty. Then they can cause us a lot of anxiety, anger, frustration, resentment, all those dysphoric feelings and our public presentation versus our reality. Some people start to feel more depressed and more anxious because their public presentation online is one of perfection and they're feeling lonely and isolated and sad and nobody's, nobody's checking in on them. It's like, you know, I feel awful and nobody asked me how I'm feeling. Well, when you look back past their last 20 posts, their last 20 posts look like they're just having a grand old time. If the public presentation does not match the reality, people are going to respond to that public presentation. Which when they do respond, which means you people need to be realistic. And this goes to, these are a whole, this is a whole new set of cognitive distortions that they probably had no idea about when they originally started talking about them. Other contributing factors to people's depression and anxiety online, if they have pre existing mood disorders, then they are already in a vulnerable state when they get online. So when they get online they may be more likely to be triggered and again, inefficient or ineffective real life supports tends to hinder people's ability to avoid feeling upset when they're online. Ultimately, social media itself is not necessarily harmful. It can allow people to connect with others that are thousands of miles away that we really love and cherish, just like the phone back, you know, back in the olden days. But when used inappropriately or when used without a thorough understanding of how it operates, it can create a lot of feelings of rejection, isolation, depression and resentment. Social media can provide opportunities for positive interactions. Yes, it can happen on your own newsfeed. It can also happen in groups. I'm a member of several groups where there is a lot of support for one another and you know, they're professional groups, so these are support for other counselors and new counselors. And it's wonderful, you see a lot of interaction. By the same token, other groups that I'm in, there's very little activity and it's not because people don't care. I really, truly believe that. I believe that people are overwhelmed and, you know, if they're a member of, you know, 10, 15, 20 groups, they just get too exhausted to even respond anymore. I know I go into each one of my groups and I try, try to respond to posts, but if I respond to more than two or three posts in a group, you know, after I've done several groups, I'm pretty wiped out. Which is one of the reasons, you know, I kind of get frustrated on social media because I want positive interactions. I want to provide positive interactions. However, I think social media is really just burning us all out in many ways because there's just so much stimulation and there's just not enough hours in the day. Additionally, people's reaction to social media may mirror their real life activities like excessive attention seeking, which we can use as a therapeutic tool. We also need to understand that their reactions in social media are likely going to be affected by their real life temperament and personality and stuff. Just, you know, like all of our communication is. And people's reaction may be the opposite of real life. Presenting an idealized self, which makes them feel even more isolated when we're working with clients. Help them see how social media can be a tool and help them look and weigh the positives and benefits of being on social media and figure out, you know, how much of their energy do they really want to devote to it and what things can they let go? How do they know when something's toxic and you know, maybe learning a little bit about how to trick the algorithms so they see positive stuff in their feed instead of things that upset them a lot. Between writing notes, filing insurance claims, and scheduling with clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That's why I recommend Therapy Notes. Their easy to use platform lets you manage your practice securely and efficiently. Visit therapynotes.com to get two free months of Therapy notes by just using the promo code CEU or when you sign up for a free trial@theapynotes.com. If this podcast helps you help your clients or yourself, please support us by purchasing your ceus@allce.com or getting your agency to sponsor an episode. A direct link to the on demand CEUs for this podcast is@allce.com podcastce that's allce.com podcastce. To sponsor an episode of Counselor Toolbox and reach over 50,000 clinicians per week, go to allce.com sponsor. Thank you.