Opening Up About How Social Media Affects Me (& You) Psychologically

This past spring I took a Communications class on interpersonal relationships. My lectures focused on how we interact with and communicate with others, including our interactions through social media. I was very interested in our lecture about how social media affects us psychologically, so I deiced to write my Pack Fashion Magazine article on the subject. Today I will be sharing a more personal version of the article, edited to include my thoughts and even more quotes from the amazing bloggers I interviewed. The photos in this post are intended to enhance my point- because they are all totally staged. I’ll talk more about it later, but to me, my blog photos are like fashion magazine shoots- the locations and photos are meant to complement the outfits not show my day to day life. 

Social media may be more harmful to us than we realize. Interpersonal Communications professor Jodi Wahba emphasizes the effects of social media specifically in her lessons regarding how we form our view of ourselves. According to Wahba, social media can be extremely detrimental to your self-esteem due to social comparison. Wahba states that one of the most common ways we form opinions of ourselves is by comparing ourselves to other people. Social platforms like Instagram and Facebook can cause us to feel less attractive or happy than our perceived idea of “most people” based on the reference group we are following. No one is transparent online. As Wahba mentions, it is no secret that everyone puts their best self forward. We all know it, but psychologically, we forget to acknowledge it.

Wahba states that the negative effects mentioned above were higher for those following more strangers on platforms like Instagram. Wahba explains that when you only see the perfect display of someone, you can start to believe that there is nothing wrong in their lives; that they are actually living this perfect reality. According to Wahba, seeing the best presentation of your personal friends being pushed on social media will not make you feel as inferior because you have to ability to think back on and acknowledge things about their personal life that you know are not as perfect as they may seem. Fashion, beauty, and lifestyle blogger Piper Puccetti stated when asked about the negative psychological effects of her blogging account versus her personal account, “I think the [negative effects] can be equal. They are still both areas where you can compare yourself and feel left out or unworthy based on how someone else’s life looks!”

Personally, I feel myself being more negatively affected by someone’s Instagram or social media platform when I know them personally, specifically if I already feel intimidated by them in real life. In my mind, seeing a perfect photo of a blogger does not affect me because I look at it as art and know what it is like to take thousands of photos just to get that perfect one. I also know that most blogging photos are staged in order to highlight the outfit or product and create a photo that captures followers’ attention and persuades them to purchase the item. This does not bother me because I am able to break down their process and see what takes place behind the photo. However, when I see a perfect photo or caption of someone I’ve met in real life, it bothers me more because it is more real to me. Another reason I think my personal Instagram account has more negative effects is that I constantly see people I know posting the fun things they are doing with all their friends. I know that no one (except me, lol) posts about their boring day home alone and only chooses to share the fun parts, but I forget to acknowledge this when I constantly only see posts of them living their best life.

Wahba also points out that our social media can make us feel good about ourselves because of the likes and comments we may get, but that these numbers can also cause us to compare ourselves more. When asked about the issue, Puccetti stated that she feels that she is a part of a “strong community of girls who truly want to build one another up through their interests, but I also feel like it can easily take hold of your life and confidence in a negative way through comparison and others not having the best intentions.” Fashion blogger Devon Foster states when asked about how likes and numbers factor into it, “Every time I lose a follower I question myself and the content I’m producing.”

I know that I feel frustrated about numbers sometimes and feel like they can make or break my success. But again, I think it is different to look at it from a blogging perspective than from a social life perspective. Back when I only had my personal Instagram, I know that if my selfie did not get 100 likes in a certain amount of time, or at all, then I was going to feel bad about myself. I hate to admit it, but I would go to celebrity accounts and scroll through their comments and find accounts who said “like for like” or “row for row” and would like their photos for them to like mine back. When I was in 9th grade, numbers had a personal effect on me. For the blog, I have a goal for the range of numbers I hope to be in, but I do not spam to get there and know that the numbers do not reflect my self-worth. Even now whenever I occasionally post on my personal account, I literally just log in and post and then log back out and have no relative idea of the number of likes it gets because it is no longer important to me in that way. My personal accounts are now used for what they are supposed to be – a way to share a little piece of my personal life and what I have been up to with those I know.

Pretty much everything I just mentioned was in regard to likes. As for followers, I could not care less about my personal account. As for my blogging account, I wish it was bigger than it is. The fact that people with 10k+ followers can have the swipe-up linking feature on their stories and I cannot is especially frustrating to me because I feel like there is so much more I could share with my followers if I could easily link to a product or post. Overall regarding the numbers on the blog, I wish they were better, but it is not something that is going to discourage me from posting or ruin my passion.

As for the occasional hate comments, they can be discouraging. Fortunately, I have only gotten them a handful of times and they have only been on my YouTube channel. One specific time a girl went through every single one of my videos and commented on all of them that I was a terrible YouTuber, my videos were boring, I was ugly, my boyfriend was also ugly and a slew of cuss words- literally every cruel thing you could think of. It got to me for half a second because I felt that I must know this person personally for them to feel such a need to attack me on every video. I ended up just blocking the user, like I always do, and going on posting like I was before. Recently when I cut my hair off some man commented that I “butchered” myself and that now my “phone will not be ringing.” That one did not get to me as much, I actually thought his decision to say my phone won’t be ringing was actually pretty funny. While comments can hurt your feelings for a second, I try to remember that they are only trying to hurt me because of their own issues and only allow myself to be bothered by it for the 30 seconds it takes me to block and delete their comments.

With regards to Instagram’s new algorithm, where your most seen photos are those of the accounts that you like and engage with the most, making it ultimately harder to grow an account organically, Wahba predicts that this will “increase the competitive factor on social media” and result in more negative opinions of yourself since you are more aware that fewer people are seeing your photos based on your engagement levels. When asked about how lack of growth affects her, Foster states, “Not seeing much growth or having decreasing numbers makes you question everything. Not only do we have to worry about the quality of the content that we’re posting, but now we have to worry about what time to post, what day to post, the Instagram story that correlates with said post, etc. I’ve seen so many bloggers using all kinds of different apps to figure out when the best time to post is, and I just feel like it causes so much extra stress.” When asked about Instagram’s new algorithm, Puccetti stated, “It almost makes me feel like I have to post certain things to get x amount of likes and become successful.”

Oh, the algorithm. I have absolutely given up on trying to figure out how to “work” it. Let’s make it more simple to understand how it affects me: on average, only 25% of my followers even SEE the photo on their feed. It’s frustrating, but I am over it. I just post whenever I feel like it now and make sure to post on my stories because more people actually see that than do my actual posts (though those numbers have been declining recently as well).

This is more than just a theory. According to the Interplay article and experiment that Wahba mentioned, “Does Instagram = #Instasad?,” after 117 regular users of Instagram were given tests measuring tendencies towards negative social comparison and depression, a connection was found. When asked how social media affects her psychologically, Foster states “I know that as I’m scrolling through my Instagram feed, I am constantly comparing the photos that I take to other fellow Instagrammers, which normally results in me feeling like I’m not good enough. I think that this feeling of never being good enough ruins the fun aspect of social media, which is what it really should be. That’s how I personally feel, and I’m sure there are people who feel differently, but as someone who is trying to be a ‘fashion blogger,’ the psychological effects of social media can really take a toll on someone.”

To avoid the negative effects of social media, Wahba recommends building and focusing more on relationships outside of social media and consciously acknowledging that photos are not portraying their entire life and that everyone has faults. I personally choose to unfollow anyone who makes me feel insecure or question myself and choose not to spend time on my personal account, where I follow people I actually know, because I know it affects me more. Puccetti states that in order to escape the pressure of social media, spends time with her family because “at the end of the day, they will be there for me even when Instagram and social media are long gone!” The most obvious way to avoid the psychological damage of social media is to spend less time on it. Rather than limiting your screen time on a day-to-day basis or taking a day or two out of the week to completely disconnect. I could not have stated it better than Foster myself, “I think that taking the time to take a break from social media is definitely important because there is still a world out there that everyone needs to experience outside of their phone!”