How social media can contribute to negative mental health outcomes

COVID- has created an unpresented social environment for society. Many individuals have lost family members and individuals that they cared deeply about. To date, nearly 550,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. These individuals represented friends, family members, community leaders, and loved ones. For many the lose alone can be difficult to overcome given the prevailing circumstances. Compounding the issue were economic considerations that ravaged most of the developed world. Millions of jobs within the travel, tourism, retail, and energy sector were lost. Airlines furloughed employees, department stores cut staff, and operating plants shut down. The American economy was decimated causing further stress, depression and mental illness. Even the two circumstances above were not enough, many individuals were forced to stay at home for fear of infection. Many of the elements and services designed to give consumer reprieved during an economic contraction were suddenly taken away. Children could no longer attend school, teens could no longer go to the mall or see a movie, adults could no longer frequent their favorite restaurant. All of these elements coalesced together to form a lollapalooza effect. In this instance, a litany of variables was all reacting in one direction to cause harm to society. In this instance it was mental and physical illness. To mitigate the impact of influences presented above individuals turned to the internet, and in particular social media. Social media use during the pandemic exploded as individuals were forced to stay home. It is my contention that this excessive social media use is what has contributed to the large amounts of depression with adults with lower socio-economic status . This social media use, combined with the variables mentioned above have contributed to the decline in mental health that has occurred throughout the pandemic.

To begin, culture, and in particular, social media have heavily influenced the perceptions of social comparison. Social concepts of social comparison are exacerbated when juxtaposed against a various written communication style online. For one, research has shown that social media posts and influencers often lie when presenting their lives online (Dweck, 2006). These lies are also perpetuated through written communication designed to provide validity to their online lives. These impressions are particularly designed to garner “likes,” “followers,” and “subscribers.” In other instances, the posts are design to appease the content creator through social validations. These validations become reality for those who view them on a consistent basis. This is exacerbated during large economic declines or depressions. For one, economic declines have been associated with increases in mental health (Atkinson, 1986). This is particularly true for individuals who are lower on the social economic spectrum. These individuals tend to have lower educations levels and thus lower skilled jobs, and is some cased work longer hours. Once an economy contracts these individuals are often the first to get furloughed, cut, or outright fired. Unfortunately, these individuals tend to be mostly minorities. We saw this during COVID-19 as entire industries laid off workers in an attempt to remain viable as a business. The travel and tourism industry furloughed hundreds of thousands of individuals to conserve cash and avoid bankruptcy. The retail industry also laid off hundreds of thousands of workers to help prevent bankruptcy. Unfortunately for the retail sector, the industry overall still experienced massive bankruptcies including JC Penny, Neiman Marcus, Sears, Hertz, and many more. Each of these layoffs places a mental burden on the individual as the economic downtown makes if very difficult for them to find a job or work. This further contributes to their depression and mental health depreciation (Brenner, 1990). For one these individuals are typically low skilled laborers. As a low skill laborer, their jobs can be easily replaced with other employees or even automated, thus making an economic recovery for them much less likely. In addition, these skills are not in high demand during an economic contraction such as COVID-19 or during the 2008 financial crisis. Here, there was simply less economic demand for air travel, vacations, or apparel. Government actions to close businesses left them little choice but to layoff individuals. Thus, those will low socio-economic status are left with no jobs, low prospects for employment, and irrelevant skills that are not in demand at the moment. Each of these components contribute to their mental health and their susceptibility to mental health abuse (Brenner, 1993)

Social media is directly related to this mental health issue as consumers often faced the juxtaposition of the fake social media versus their own actual standing in life. Consumers tend to make social comparisons as it relates to social status, wealth, and material possessions. Research shows that many individuals, particularly those with low socio-economic status cannot differentiate the fake images presented on social media relative to the real lives these individuals live (Escobar-Viera, 2018). However, through social comparison, these untruthful posts can cause irreputable harm to others. This is particularly true as followers attempt to mimic a lifestyle that is not truthful or blatantly false. This occurs as people compare their current lives to the lives of the people they admire on social media. As many individuals compare their lives to others, this can cause depression in individuals who perceive their lives to be far behind their contemporaries (Saiphoo, 2020). This according to some studies can cause a lack of self-esteem, lower confidence and even depression. Low confidence ultimately lowers individual motivation as it relates to talents and abilities the individual may possess. As a result, this could lead to lower performance at work and other attributes related to life (Notre dame, 2019).

In addition, social media can cause further damage through misinformation. Often, social media, allows individuals to remain in a “silo” with those who are like minded and have similar values customers and beliefs. Research has shown the individuals on social media and their friend rarely deviate from their own personal beliefs, desires and customs. As a result, the elements of group think enters the mental health equation as those will low socio-economic standing often communicate with others on social media. This creates a cycle of mental health relates issues social media can reinforce self-destructive behaviors. These behaviors can include low self-esteem, depression, blaming others, anger, and negative behaviors. This can also lead to self-pity and a feeling that there is no way to improve individual performance. From a social perspective this can ultimately undermine the economic progress of the individual as they neglect their own self development and improvement. Due, in part to social media, individuals feel inferior to others, shun their own personal development, and develop mental health issues. These issues are then exacerbated by economic downturn which seemingly reinforce their beliefs regarding their inferiority. As noted above, being the first casualties of layoffs and furloughs, these individual often feel expendable and tie their self-worth to their jobs and social media personas (Catalano, 1991)

In conclusion, mental healthcare, economics and social media are tightly interconnected. Individuals love to engage in social comparison even it is historically a fabrication. Research noted above has shown that much of the information of social media is misinformation, partial truths and outright fabrications. As mentioned above these fabrications are believed, due in part to the silos and like-minded individuals that tend to congregate together on social media sits. Simply put, people like to be around people that think and act like them. Unfortunately, this can be a detriment to the mental health of individuals, particularly of those with low socio-economic status. This is due in part to their identity being tied to their job classification, material objects and their identity on social media. When either of these items are threatened, as in the case of an economic downtown, these individuals believe they have lost their standing among their peers. This can be discouraging to individuals with low socio-economic status, thus undermining their own economic development. This in turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as these individuals start to believe they are actually inferior due to the concept of social comparison discussed above. This ultimately manifests itself in the form of depression, and other mental health issues.