Has this ever happened to you? You wake up a little later than normal so you’re rushing to get off to work. The morning is filled with back-to-back meetings. You look up and it’s lunch time so you take a moment to grab a cup of coffee and realized you haven’t checked social media today.
While you’re drinking a cup of coffee you scroll through your feed and see what your “friends” have posted. The more you scroll the more you start to feel a general sense of unhappiness.
Before that moment, you wouldn’t describe your mood as unhappy. You were feeling productive and focused, but now it’s all changed after a quick scroll.
Maybe you find yourself feeling angry because someone posted something contrary to your political or social view. You spend a few moments debating whether you should comment or let it go. You reason, if you let it go this worldview might infect others. But, if you say something people might view you as a jerk.
You decide to enlighten your friend with a counterpoint they obviously haven’t thought of. Your heart is beating faster. Your hands are getting sweaty as you type. You read it again for typos and then hit comment.
The world is right again. Truth wins the day! “Ding.” Someone else has tagged you in a comment. Now the rest of your day at work is consumed trying to enlighten all kinds of strangers. You get home and instead of focusing on your kids you are embroiled in an ideological battle. You’ve now tagged other friends for support. You are texting friends to weigh in and join the fight for freedom.
A perfectly fine day changed because of one post. No one’s mind was changed about the issue, but your mind has changed about the character of certain “friends” who weighed in. And people’s minds about you changed as they were watching the conversation.
Social media is making you unhappy.
Let’s rewind…you’re standing drinking coffee scrolling through the feed and it’s not a political or social post you see, instead it’s someone’s picture on a beach, or at Disney (again!), or their beautiful home, or out on a date, or their cute dog, or closing another sale, or a new car, or their perfect kids. Instantly, you compare that picture with your life and a feeling of discontent washes over you. Your heart starts to turn green with envy. You’re frustrated with your life for no other reason than a picture.
Shortly you find yourself in a conversation that starts with…Did you see their…? Can you believe…?
Social media is making you unhappy.
Jaron Lanier wrote a book called, “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” (salty language warning) and includes a chapter about this very idea. Besides making the creepy point that “you are the product, not the customer” in social media, he points out many people have discovered their inner troll on social media.
Lanier writes, “If, when you participate in online platforms, you notice a nasty thing inside yourself, an insecurity, a sense of low self-esteem, a yearning to lash out, to swat someone down, then leave that platform.”
Social media is making you unhappy.
If social media is doing this to us as adults what is it doing to our children? We’re supposed to be the mature ones and yet we struggle with our inner troll. We struggle with happiness after a scroll.
My middle school daughter begged us to get a social media account. We relented but we didn’t like how she was glued to her phone. It was too much like looking in the mirror. We wanted our daughter back. Last year we ended up bribing her with a car to make it happen. We told her that if she went off social media we would get her a car when she was old enough to drive. (What would you pay to have your daughter back? Or protect her self-esteem?)
After unplugging for a couple of months she told us how relieved she was (her words) not to be on social media any more. She said social media felt like a full-time job. One of her friends would post a picture and then send a group text asking everyone to “like” it. If a picture didn’t get 100 likes they would pull the picture down. Self-esteem? Emotional health?
Most of the students in her school have a “finsta” or a fake Instagram account…one for their parents and one for their friends. They have no idea that what they are posting today is killing their future careers.
It makes me wonder if social media will be found to be a cause in the rise of depression and suicide rates?
When are you at your happiest? What fills up your soul? What breathes life into you? If you’re like me the answer isn’t social media.
So why do we keep scrolling through the feeds?
We normally say it’s because we want to know what’s going on in other people’s lives. But do we really know what’s going on? Are we really more connected? Or do we just see a Facetuned publicity shot designed to give the illusion of the perfect family, perfect home, perfect kids, perfect vacation, perfect life?
I’m not sure social media has the capability to let us truly know what’s going on in our friends’ lives.
If we really want to know why don’t we just call or send them a text or an email?
I think you owe it to yourself to think about this question today…Why do I keep scrolling through the feeds?
The next time you finish a session of scrolling ask yourself, “Do I feel happier?” “Do I feel refreshed?” “What do I really know about my friends?”
Typically when we do something which doesn’t make us happy it’s because we are delaying the happiness or it’s an expression of love. For example, saving financially doesn’t make us happy now, but it will later. We are delaying the gratification. Other times we give up our happiness as an expression of our love…picture the parent who gets up at 3am to take care of a sick child.
If social media doesn’t make you happy is there a delayed gratification? I can’t think of one. Are you sacrificing your contentment and emotional health while you scroll as an expression of your love for others? Probably not.
Why do we feel like we can’t stop scrolling? It sounds a lot like addiction.
These are the questions I’m asking myself about social media and I wanted you to wrestle with them like I am. We only have one soul and we carry it with us into eternity. You owe it to yourself to examine what happens to it when you scroll.
I haven’t deleted my social media accounts yet, but I can tell you I scroll through my feeds a lot less…because social media often makes me unhappy.
