Mental Health in Digital Media

Key Words: attention span, social media, technology, mental health, mental disorders, self-esteem, students, teens, depression, Covid-19, global, FOMO, Twitter, TIkTok, Instagram, gaming, ADHD, classroom, anxiety

As digital media becomes more prevalent in everyday life, its influence over people's mental health grows. Digital media reaps benefits for those with mental health disorders, such as allowing others to know more about their disorder or allowing individuals to embrace their disorder and feel welcome in a community. However, it can also negatively affect people's mental health as well such as by creating stress by trying to maintain unrealistic beauty expectations.

Connections Made through Social Media:
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social media helped bring people together, keep people in touch, spread information and influence about Covid-19 and the vaccine, etc. It helped many people replace the social life they are missing out of. An article by Sameer Hinduja titled “How Social Media Helps Teens Cope With Anxiety, Depression, and Self-Harm” explains the perspective of a teenager living in isolation from human interaction and how they cope. One of the main issues that is addressed here is the topic of cyberbullying. Many people think that when people use social media, they are going to get cyber bullied. However, according to this article, only 12% of students in middle or high-school are actually cyber bullies. The article also goes into greater depth about specific forms of social media, like Youtube and Tumblr, and their influence on teens.

Social media is able to connect mental health institutions and groups directly to its users. This connection allows institutions and groups to develop and adapt more toward their clientele. Moreover, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, individuals were able to get additional support from mental health institutions and groups directly through social media, since meeting in person has been restricted. Additionally, peer support on Twitter allows people to open up and share their experiences with one another. Social media also creates and fosters inclusive communities that allow users to share their experience and interact with others as a form of support. Moreover, anonymity makes people more comfortable with sharing what they have gone through. When institutions see the experiences, people have gone through they are able to figure out how best to adapt themselves and become better support systems to individuals.

Benefits for those with Attention Disorders:
The digital world is epicly broad and quite easy to get lost in. Despite this, new studies show that certain digital technology and gaming consoles help children with diagnosed ADHD, specifically in an elementary classroom setting. New methods of education show teachers using gaming to connect with students that struggle to focus. As new studies and digital systems continue to be tested in the classroom, the benefits have only grown. Students with attention disorders have shown improvement in test scores and overall classroom behavior. Similarly, Dr. Marcovitz believes that digital media does not have a negative effect on attention span, if anything, it simply has not impact at all. Marcvitz claims that educational technology does not impact student attention spans since we already live in a digital world. Also, during the pandemic, many teachers have used social media apps to connect with their students. One example is a teacher assigning a TikTok based assignments. Besides these positives among education, many other digital forms improve attention span. Such as mediation apps, podcasts, brain games, etc.

The Impact on Attention Span
There are many distracters on digital platforms, from pop-up adds to constant notifications. There is no doubt that it is difficult to remain focused on the task at hand. The myth that as humans, our attention has decreased since the coming of the digital age is not true. But, that is not to say that there aren’t negatives. The important thing is that ,“we can control our environment, so if we have problems concentrating, there are many solutions”. Though it is not proven that digital media led to a decreased attention span, there are still solutions to those that find focusing on the internet challenging.

The Adolescent Experience
Digital media is noted as causing stress, depression, and low self-esteem to adolescents. This is significant considering how digital media is being utilized currently at a younger age than ever before. Moreover, with the increased usage of photo-shopped images, adolescents are exposed to false standards at a young age which causes low self-esteem. Social media has been proven to increase a negative view of self, as users are comparing themself to a perfect standard. Children are very impressionable to the world around them, when exposed to photo-shopped images they begin to think that they must look a certain way. This thought process is toxic

Fear Behind Social Media
One of the biggest drawbacks of social media is the amount of negativity on it. Many people are concerned about social media and its link to depression. This fear is not misplaced because there are many cases where depression and suicide have been connected to social media. According to an article titled, “Link Between Social Media and Mental Health,” the time spent on social and forms of mental illness like anxiety and depression are a common link. The more time one spends online, the more likely they are being affected negatively. Another point that was made was self esteem issues. Instead of people feeling inspired or joy from following their favorite users, they sometimes feel inadequate and it ends up hurting their self esteem. Social media can be toxic and correlate negatively with body image, as one compares themselves with seemingly flawless influencers and celebrities. With this in mind, it is important to keep in mind that everything must be taken in moderation, especially the huge content sources of social media.

The Student Perspective
Students are typically more social in the sense that almost everyday they are surrounded by classmates and teachers in the hundreds or even thousands. It can be hard to keep track of all the people that they may not see on a daily basis but digital media provides the opportunity to help and keep in touch with the wide variety of people that they have met. Unfortunately this also means that it can be hard to avoid if there comes a conflict on digital media. While some studies suggest that the amount of “new victims” created by online bullying is much less than the amount created by traditional bullying, these victims should not be discounted. On top of this, students in an all digital environments sometimes lose scope of what the media actually encompasses. Studies have found that students that make a habit of digital media are more likely to experience mental disorders such as anxiety than those who do not use digital media habitually. Students are more likely to make digital media a habit because of their sociability. Since digital media communication is super common now with schooling are sometimes forced into drastic circumstances due to mental disorders. Anxiety and depression that can lead to severe academic consequences such as failing a class, being forced to drop a class etc. Upwards of 45 percent experienced anxiety or depression that caused the failure or dropping of a class, so teachers and students alike should understand the drastic effects all digital schooling may have on the students.

This issue continues to become more present as digital media and the internet develop further. Since communicating online has an impersonal nature around it, it can be difficult for students to figure out if comments are said in a joking manner or not. Thankfully, schools are starting to recognize online harassment as an issue and they have begun to issue punishment for students who violate the school honor code. School holds a major influence in any adolescent’s life because it is where he or she learns to socialize and where most of the day is spent. Since school is so vital to young people’s development, it is important that their schools are actively teaching them to be good citizens and holding them accountable for their actions online, as digital media becomes more present in everyday life.

The Global Perspective
The experience of digital media is somewhat universal in the sense that places like Asia and Europe also have an ever changing relationship with it where it hasn’t being explicitly placed as good or bad. Digital media is even used in similar fashions in countries like China where social media is used to keep in touch with old friends, relatives and neighbors. In a way it is an honor to be on somebody’s contact list as they tend to them every so often. Similarly a factory worker in China uses digital media albums that are shared with his wife so she can post pictures to it for days that he is at work for long periods of time and misses them. While social media is a good way to keep track of others sometimes this creates something that we are familiar with in the U.S. where you have them on social media, but the friendship dies off. In China these are called zombie relationships because they are dead friendships, but they are barely clinging on through using social media. Digital media leads to the similar trends in many different environments leading us to believe that the impacts of it are universal. The countries that experience this expand just beyond big population countries like the US and China, it also includes smaller countries in Europe.

In the case of attention disorders, new studies are being conducted on a global level to test new digital technology effectiveness on elementary age students with ADHD. What was once stereotyped as the problem (digital media), may in-fact be the solution. For example, a school in France is using educational gaming to help increase interaction and attention levels of ADHD students.

In Singapore, individuals are able to have a positive experience on social media that can improve their mental health. The increased use of social media as a part of normal life has raised the question of whether it has an effect on social anxiety. Researchers found that Instagram alone did not increase one’s social anxiety, but rather by promoting self-esteem, anxiety can be reduced by the social media site. This is because Instagram allows people to connect and post when they are feeling most confident, so when they share these important moments, then they are able to experience reduced anxiety.

Around the world, many are able to find coping mechanisms to help ease the pain, others are left without these methods and are forced to suffer in silence. However, that all changed when the world shut down to stop the spread of Covid-19. After that, mental health for many people took a turn for the worst. One article titled, “ Mitigate the effects of home confinement on children during the COVID-19 outbreak ” talks about the dangers of prolonged isolation from other people and the outside world, targeted for the Chinese Government in hopes to help bring more attention to mental health. The government did a good job in shutting everything down to prevent spread, however, the article claims that they overlooked the fact that while they are preventing spread, they forget about people’s mental health. Since Covid-19 is a universal issue, this article now is prevalent everywhere. This article wants the Chinese Government to bring awareness for mental and physical health. Systemic worldwide changes can lead to benefit for people around the world. Large changes would burn a trail for others to follow in the path and this may lead to less stigma surrounding mental health issues around the globe.

Advice
-Think before you post and remember your audience

-Balance social media with real world interactions

-Take breaks from digital media

-Surround yourself with people you feel comfortable talking to (parent, friend, teacher, guardian, sibling)

-Seek out help and a professional when experiencing thoughts of self harm, panic attacks, and trouble focusing.