We could be happy without Facebook. Couldn’t we ...?
IREMEMBER a time when Facebook was fun. When I joined the social media platform I was suddenly reconnecting with people I’d gone to school with or family I hadn’t seen for years. I’d really look forward to getting home from work and logging on to the computer to see what everyone was up to. It was a good laugh, a bit chaotic, and it felt like a shared pastime that everyone you knew was taking part in. Then something changed. Over time, chaotic, friendly Facebook developed a more controlled, keeping-up-with-theJoneses vibe. As the social network introduced a heavier focus on photography and video, our attention seemed to shift from status updates to image maintenance. Social media received a heavy injection of narcissism, and it began teasing out our worst traits of competitiveness and nastiness. Online trolling has rocketed since, and any kind of modern-day bullying among young people is likely to involve an element of social media. Today marks the end of Mental Health Awareness Week. There seem to be more online awareness days for mental health than anything else, and many people pour their hearts out on their social media accounts. Talking about mental ill health is a good thing, but as each awareness day comes around I notice another trend creeping up alongside it: those who attribute part of the problem to social media itself. I know the feeling. It’s incredible how lonely Facebook can become. Despite the plethora of images and videos of our friends and family doing everything from eating dinner to having parties, there is a sense of separation that is difficult to shake off. When once it was lovely to see a cousin at a barbecue somewhere, suddenly you realise that you’re not there with them. When you can’t make it to a friend’s party because you’re working, you sink into dismay at the thought of what you’re missing. When you see a friend give birth to another baby, you sit in the office wondering whether you’ve chosen the correct path in life. Everything becomes a comparison with everything else. Everything you feel satisfied with is suddenly up for question in case you’re missing out on something and, hell, if there’s something in your life you’re not happy with, social media begins to feel like a knife twisting in your side.
When you notice that you don’t feel like you’ve got your money’s worth at a gig unless you get to livestream a chunk of it for your FB friends, or realise that looking at a beautiful sunset is accompanied with a burning need to take 25 photographs of it, you really strain to remember how you used to enjoy things when they were just for you, and not for your hundreds of Facebook friends.
If we can question whether a tree makes a noise when it falls in the woods if no-one is around to hear it we may well find ourselves questioning whether happiness can truly exist if noone is on Facebook to see it.
The good news for Facebook, and the bad news for us, is that this behaviour is addictive. We continue placing ourselves smack, bang in the middle of this stress and anxiety because we can’t stop it. There is money to be made in the therapy sector in the coming years because of it.
We are victims of a social media stranglehold, yet complicit in it. It is irresistible behaviour, even if it results in arguments, strained relationships, jealousy, anxiety and depression. Study after study suggests a link between poorer mental health and social media use, but we keep going back for more.
Not only do people willingly return to the technological vices heaping ever-more pressure on their mental wellbeing, they’re posting on social media about how miserable it is making them, further underlying our mounting inability to just switch it off. This is personally dangerous behaviour: it is destructive and abnormal.
When it comes to online mental health awareness, perhaps we should turn our eyes towards the social networks – which are forever shirking responsibility for any negative consequence associated with them – and ask what we can all do to prevent the new crisis for psychological wellbeing sitting on the horizon.
For far too many people, it is clearly already here.