Social media trends in health psychology research and dissemination

Social Media Trends: Health Psychology
One of the most notable trends in recent years is the rise in interest in the field of popular psychology. People conduct personality tests on themselves, engage in self-diagnosis, and simplify psychological conditions (both common and uncommon) and apply them to their daily lives. The ubiquity of the Internet has made this even more accessible. Although self-help books have been best sellers for more than a hundred years, and even 19th century magazines printed personality self-quizzes, the ease of taking and scoring them online has caused an explosion of self-analysis (Bisceglio, 2017). Although some of the quizzes are clearly silly, others, like online versions of the Myers-Briggs, are also used in a serious setting as a method of analyzing prospective employees. “In-depth psychological assessments like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator began popping up in the first half of the 20th century for the purpose of scanning and sorting employees in industrial workplace,” and despite being “dismissed by the scientific community as unreliable—if not dangerously discriminatory—they, too, have persisted” (Bisceglio, 2017, par.9).
Personality tests promise a very easy and accessible method of understanding the human character and self, in an environment which can be confusing, where there are so many opportunities to challenge conventional notions of selfhood. Their most severe critics allege these quizzes promote narcissism and encourage the culture’s continued fixation on standardized testing. The use of social media in general, some psychology researchers believe, has had a seismic impact upon how humans cognitively process their environment. According to the Association for Psychological Science, getting appreciation from social media in the forms of likes and comments has an addictive potential: “The same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are activated when teenagers see large numbers of ‘likes’ on their own photos or the photos of peers in a social network, according to findings from a new study in which researchers scanned teens’ brains while they used social media” (“Social Media Likes,” 2018, par.1). Even on a neurological level, when monitoring teens’ brains using MRIs, it has been found that the nucleus accumbens, or reward center, which is already more sensitive in adolescence, shows particularly acute sensitivity in regards to social media posts (“Social Media Likes,” 2018). Social media can also intensify the fraught social environment teens are already grappling with on a regular basis as part of their adolescence.
The use of social media has proven to be useful for professionals in search of raw material in which to study human social interactions. Before, experimental psychology was mainly relegated to the laboratory. Through the use of online surveys, research of all kinds can more easily be accumulated and assessed, regardless of topic. Professionals can also observe how individuals interact online within a relatively anonymous framework, thus reducing the so-called Hawthorne effect, which states that being observed often has a significant influence upon human behavior, and can thus bias results (McCambridge, Witton, & Elbourne, 2014).
It should be noted that despite the frequent criticism of the ubiquity of online interactions, there is no evidence, according to current research, that frequent social media use exacerbates the stress, at least of adults. According to Hampton (et al. 2015), although women report higher levels of stress than men overall, for women there is an association with lower levels of stress and moderate use of online media, which is often associated with sharing with friends. With men, there was neither a positive nor a negative association (Hampton, et al., 2015). Of course, social media users tend to be more highly educated and affluent versus individuals who do not have access to digital technology, so this could potentially skew the results. Regardless, although the Internet may have changed human psychology and the way humans perceive the world around them, it should not necessarily be viewed as something which automatically terminates real life connections, nor does it necessarily have a negative impact on the lives of frequent users.
Reference
Bisceglio, P. (2017). The dark side of that personality quiz you just took. The Atlantic. Retrieved
from: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/07/the-internet-is-one-big- personality-test/531861/
Hampton, K, Lu, W., Shin, I., & Purcell, K. (2015). Social media and the cost of caring. Pew
Research Center. Retrieved from: http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/15/psychological-stress-and-social-media-use-2
McCambridge, J., Witton, J., & Elbourne, D. R. (2014). Systematic review of the Hawthorne
effect: New concepts are needed to study research participation effects. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 67(3), 267–277. Retrieved from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3969247/
Social media likes impact teens’ brains and behavior. (2018). Psychological Science. Retrieved
from: https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/social-media-likes-impact- teens-brains-and-behavior.html