Podcast - How Social Media Affects Mental Health

The podcast discusses the impact of social media on mental health. It covers how social media affects our mood and reactions to daily events. The discussion also touches on how social media can either enhance or deteriorate mental health, depending on the quality of its use. The hosts mention examples of how social media can improve well-being, such as providing inspiration and learning opportunities. They also mention potential negative effects, such as cyberbullying. The podcast includes advertisements for Sleep Serenity and Beach Bliss Getaways. The hosts briefly mention a study that suggests excessive social media use is associated with lower psychological well-being, but note that the research's specifics are not provided. They also bring in a guest, a digital media professor, to share their thoughts on the topic. Welcome, you're listening to the Loki True Podcast, sponsored by Sleep Serenity and Beach Bliss Getaways. The topic being covered today is social media's effect on mental health. Hi, I'm your host, Liam, here today with Julie. How are you, Julie? Doing quite fine. How are you? All right. I'm here today to interview you about a very interesting and upcoming topic, which is how social media affects mental health. Okay, so firstly, I wanted to go over what we're going to be talking about today. Do you use social media? Yeah, of course. Yeah, me too. I'm sure social media plays a substantial role in our lives and has some kind of effect on everything we do, from our mood to the way we think, even like processing information and reacting to daily events. What do you think? Yeah, daily events, of course. But okay, let's just kind of take what you said and dissect it. So daily events, absolutely. Things blow up all over social media and everyone loves to watch it, right, until people start taking it down and stuff like that. But on our moods, what do you mean on our moods, though? I mean, do you ever find that social media kind of changes your mood in something you'll see, like a post or some kind of comment you'll receive on something? Yes, absolutely. But do you mean going to social media as a reactive thing? So you're in a bad mood and then you go to social media and you open it to make yourself feel better or to deflect your attention to something else? Or do you mean just randomly browsing stuff and then seeing something and then that reactively our mood gets changed? Yeah, I think more like you come in as a neutral state and either leave like as a plus or as a minus. Okay, I see. Well, okay, most definitely with what's been happening in Israel, I could tell you that going and following and seeing everything that people post was very sort of destructive in terms of a reactionary mood to the turn of events. And that goes towards your question with events, too. As someone who considers themselves artistic, I definitely think that sometimes out of boredom, I'll lift my phone and I'll look at everybody who I sort of follow on my feed, and that's a lot of artists. So I look at different types of art that they do and new products and things like that. So that would, I guess, ideally put me in a better mood, it would inspire me, it would encourage me to go back. I find that I do that, too. And it like kind of raises my dopamine level, you know, when I'm bored, I just want to check something out. I think it depends on what your preferences are, too. So like I said, if I'm into art, then it elevates my mood because my feed is tailored to me. And I think that's a very important thing, we're probably going to talk about that. Yes, it has an effect on my mood, but it has chosen to give me things that I appreciate. If I was into violence, and for example, my feed was tailored to me, just like all social media does now, they look at the content that you stay on the most, they measure the amount of minutes or your responsiveness, or how much... The algorithm, right? Yeah. Yeah. And then based on that, they give you more videos. So let's say if I was a violent person, or I enjoy watching violent things, then it would constantly show me that kind of stuff. And then I don't know if I'm going to walk away with elevated dopamine, you know what I mean? Yeah, I think you're right about that. My Beach Bliss Getaway was pure paradise. The sun, the sand, the serenity, it was everything I needed. For our listeners, Beach Bliss is offering an exclusive 15% off your next booking. Just use code PODGETAWAY when you visit beachblissgetaways.com. Escape the hustle with Beach Bliss Getaway, because your next adventure should be pure bliss. Visit beachblissgetaways.com and use code PODGETAWAY. Alright, so I was reading the other day, there was this super cool article, I think it was by BMC Psychology, and then there was this one quote that really stood out to me. It went something like this. The considerable time people spend on social media worldwide has directed researchers' attention towards the potential benefits and risks. Research shows excessive use is mainly associated with lower psychological well-being. However, findings also suggest that the quality rather than the quantity of social media's use can determine whether the experience will either enhance or deteriorate the user's mental health. And I think that was quoted by Agnes Zilla. So I just wanted to get your opinion on it. I want to see if you agree with it or disagree with it. Well, I think it's important to say where the actual research happened and who was doing the research. I think it's important to understand what their numbers are, right? Do you know anything about that? How large of a group of study they had? I don't think it said it inside, but I'm sure there was a pretty large test group. Okay, and what were the ages? It was mainly teens. I think it's kind of important what the ages are, right? It's mainly teens, right? Yeah. I think it's a very interesting point of view that the excessive use is associated with a lower well-being, because we do tend to go to social media. Remember when Corona just happened and everyone was on TikTok? Yep. And it improved our lower feeling of not being in the society, not having any friends, not having the ability to interact with anybody. So most definitely that improved our well-being, I would say. However, there are the people that look at how exciting the life of a TikToker is and think, well, mine is just so boring, right? I mean, does that happen to you? I mean, honestly, it does. But I also find that a lot of things that you see on social media won't be 100% realistic and it will just be for the 60 seconds that are getting filmed. But I think the quote talks more about how the effect on mental health is more so based on the quality of how we use social media instead of the quantity. Right. So for example, if there's a girl that really likes her makeup and she starts feeding that kind of information to a social media account, then obviously the suggested feeds will become makeup-based and then she can try that at home and maybe she can make herself feel better. Somebody else might like, I don't know, gardening or putting PCs together. And then they actually use social media for learning and improvement and being inspired by something. So that could also improve well-being. I just don't see, per se, like what kind of example can we come up with where it lowers your social well-being? I mean, going back to your idea with a girl and her makeup, let's say she posted a video and she posted it publicly and there are people... Oh, the haters. Yeah, the people who started commenting and saying that she's ugly and kind of lowering her levels of self-esteem. I think you're always going to find those people on the internet because they aren't as scared of the consequences. They aren't facing them in person. It's over the phone. It's something that you can just close and forget about. Yeah, and it's fake accounts and all that stuff. Very true. But then on the other hand, so we're drawing a line between viewing things on social media versus posting things on social media. For example, I know for myself, and I'm not a teen, but I know for myself, I don't post content. So I view whatever's tailored to me and whatever I like to productively watch. Sleep Serenity Hold those yawns, podcast enthusiasts. 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CDC is a center for disease control and prevention, and they actually released a new article February from last year, and it was CDC Newsroom. They basically said that the new CDC report raises urgency to invest in schools as a vital lifeline to help struggling youth, and this has basically said that teen girls are experiencing now even more than 60%, like even record high levels of violence, sadness, and suicide risk. Oh, wow. So honestly, I think this is very important because in all, teen girls are what are going to be our future, our generation of doctors and lawyers, and I think even more than 60% now is kind of turning into a disease, which is why CDC kind of invested into this. I think it's very important to invest into our kids and into the future, and considering that they are continuously sounding the alarm with regards to what happens with teen girls and how they use social media to leverage their everyday life for entertainment or for communication, I think it's very alarming, I would say. I see that recently there was an article that was released with regards to social media COs of large corporations such as Facebook, and Zuckerberg was apologizing to parents for the fact that social media use led to suicides of teens and not just girls. It's crazy. So I think it's important for parents to understand what they're allowing their teens to do by enabling them to stay on their phone for long periods of time, not controlling the content that's in their social media feed, and not just having those conversations. I know in some households, dinner time or whatnot comes around, everyone puts their phone down and just talks about life, about what's important in their life, about struggles, about hurdles, about things that happen in school and outside of school. So I think it's very important that parents have to not just read these articles, but they have to act on them because it's truly eye-opening of what happens with data and content from social media getting absorbed by young minds in today's world. Yeah, I think you'd honestly be surprised in how many friends I have that are so isolated from their parents and all of these conversations and so connected to social media that it's kind of already their lifeline and they depend on it. And it's just not real at the end of the day, it's fake. Yeah. That wraps for today's episode. Thank you to all the listeners who tuned in to today's episode as well as our sponsors and Julie and Professor Evan. My pleasure. Make sure to tune in for the next episode where two AIs talk to each other. Thank you.