In modern realities, people are forced to stay away from each other, and for the majority, social platforms are the only opportunity to communicate with the world. Nevertheless, young people are prone to quickly develop an inferiority complex from the imposed standards of wealth, beauty, and success displayed on social media. Nowadays, being an active Instagram user has become a competition to showcase a life that does not exist. Thus, Instagram promotes life standards heavily detached from reality and becomes the reason for depression, social anxiety, and low self-esteem development in the younger generation.
In the conditions of a lack of physical interaction, people have to resort to virtual communication. Collective mental health seems to benefit from it: one may highlight that social media has become a wellspring for political activism, allowing people with similar views to meet and unite. In particular, the movements such as Black Lives Matter or #MeToo emerged due to the Internet; they both fight for the social change that the public has been waiting for many years. Besides, Bekalu et al. discovered that routine non-excessive social media use positively affects human well-being and increases happiness as it compensates for the lack of real-life communication (78). However, the researchers avoid admitting that, in most cases, public network services manipulate human consciousness, mostly immature minds, as they involuntarily promote creating illusory pictures of life that users willingly believe.
Instagram is one of the most popular formats of personal interaction among people today. Nonetheless, the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) proclaimed the platform to have the most dangerous effect on youth’s mental health (19). The order of social media from less to more harmful, according to the study, is as follows: Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram (Royal Society for Public Health 18). It is widely accepted that Instagram has a specific unwritten format. One must be beautifully and fashionably dressed in the photo with a good-looking background, eat and drink esthetic food only. It all encourages the content that promotes false beauty and living standards, which exerts pressure on individuals.
The network has turned into a factory of illusions; it forces people to live not the way they want but to seem what they are not. Vivid photos from the accounts of stars, popular fitness models, and travelers on social networks often do not correspond to the average person’s relatively dull everyday life. The problem under consideration is open to discussion, as one might point to studies, which manifest the positive effect of Instagram’s ‘good life’ modeling on youth through inspiration and role-modeling (Meier et al. 722). Except, Instagram algorithms encourage users to post only perfectly edited and staged visuals so that they are liked and do not disappear from the feed. Thus, a luxurious life is invented, a priori declaring everyone who does not follow it as losers.
Instagram, in particular, makes young people feel anxious and dissatisfied with their bodies. According to the RSPH report, girls significantly compare themselves to pictures created on Instagram using special filters and are out of touch with reality (11). The study quotes one respondent: “Instagram easily makes girls and women feel like their bodies are not good enough as people add filters and edit their photos to make them look ‘perfect’ (Royal Society for Public Health 10). People, in general, tend to compare themselves and other individuals. Moreover, their ideas about happiness may vary considerably, but the desire to be ‘no worse’ embedded in the depths of the psyche can depreciate the system of personal values and make one doubt their significance.
Someone else’s life, exposed, seems brighter and more intense than one’s own, precisely according to the principle by which the grass on the other side is always greener. Research provided by Ozimek and Bierhoff has shown that social media-generated FOMO – fear of missing something exciting, accompanied by chronic nervous tension – can lower a person’s self-esteem and lead to anxiety and depression (1120). Therefore, instead of inspiring, colorful images can provoke teenagers to consider their lives miserable compared to others.
Initially made to call for communication, social network services trigger the opposite desire – to go into a shell, hide, and communicate with the world only through an account. The experiment conducted by Primack et al. showed that the more people are online, the more lonely and isolated they feel (7). If friends post photos together and communicate without one of their friends, it makes the latter feel lonely. As Covert and Stefanone admit, if a person is not accepted into a group, they feel rejected and, naturally, experience negative emotions (11). The excess of emotions, in turn, slows down thoughts and prevents individuals from reasoning. Furthermore, since frequent isolation is fraught with health and psychological problems, it is essential to remind people about the effects of social media on the brain.
In a world that is actively digitalizing, social media is becoming a vital mode of communication. Social media, however, can give erroneous information about users and real-life phenomena. Virtual life does not coincide with real life, and in these contradictions, a person’s mental health cannot but be affected heavily. Society cannot blame Instagram or other platforms for the decline in mental health: it is not the social networks themselves that affect the psyche, but the content people consume. However, social networks can hurt those who are particularly vulnerable emotionally, including teenagers or those who already have weaknesses, particularly people with a problematic attitude towards their bodies. The power of social media today is too great to be frivolous about its impact on human health; thus, more research is needed to obtain more detailed data on the health effects of social media.
Works Cited
Bekalu, Mesfin A., et al. “Association of Social Media Use with Social Well-Being, Positive Mental Health, and Self-Rated Health: Disentangling Routine Use from Emotional Connection to Use.” Health Education & Behavior, vol. 46, no. 2, 2019, pp. 69–80. Sage Journals.
Covert, Jessica M., and Michael A. Stefanone. “Does Rejection Still Hurt? Examining the Effects of Network Attention and Exposure to Online Social Exclusion.” Social Science Computer Review, vol. 38, no. 2, 2018, pp. 1–17.
Meier, Adrian, et al. “Instagram Inspiration: How Upward Comparison on Social Network Sites Can Contribute to Well-Being.” Journal of Communication, vol. 70, no. 5, 2020, pp. 721–743.
Ozimek, Phillip, and Hans-Werner Bierhoff. “All My Online-Friends Are Better Than Me–Three Studies About Ability-Based Comparative Social Media Use, Self-Esteem, and Depressive Tendencies.” Behaviour & Information Technology, vol. 39, no. 10, 2020, pp. 1110–1123. ProQuest.
Primack, Brian A., et al. “Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation among Young Adults in the U.S.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, vol. 53, no. 1, 2017, pp. 1–8. ScienceDirect,
Royal Society for Public Health. Status of Mind: Social Media and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing. RSPH, 2017.