With the invention of smartphones, social media managed to reach almost every hand which was earlier confined to computers and laptops. The world has progressed a lot in technology, and now and then different social media applications are launched and made public.
The whole world seems to be in our hands. This is what the internet has made possible. You can stay connected to your work and family all the time no matter wherever you are with the help of these social media applications. The most commonly used among them are Facebook, Instagram, Skype, Twitter, WhatsApp, and Gramlike.com which provide Instagram Services.
These services have provided immense benefits, but as all medicines have side effects, these social media apps as well have adverse effects on our mental and physical health. Continually sitting in a place for hours and using them have done more harm to our health than what the cigarettes would do.
Some of the adverse effects of these social media apps are:
- It is addictive: We have become addicted to their use, and in awe of them we neglect our health, family, and friends. Traits like ignoring personal life, tolerance, escapism, mood modification, and concealing addictive behavior can be seen in people who excessively use apps like Facebook and Instagram, and they become anxious when they are said to restrain themselves from them.
- It triggers more sadness and less well-being: Psychologists revealed that more social media usage has resulted in less happiness and less satisfaction among its users. People become socially isolated because they lose their physical interaction with their friends and family.
- Comparing our lives with others is mentally unhealthy: One of the significant factors that increase social isolation is that we start to examine the lives of our friends on Facebook with ours. Feeling that the other person is doing better makes people feel bad about themselves and incorporates sadness and depression in them.
- It can lead to jealousy: Comparing your lives with others’ perfect lives triggers the feeling of resentment, be it the vacation pictures, well-mannered kids, exceptional professional experience or any other quality that you lack. This develops negative feelings for others which is unhealthy as an envious person can never be satisfied with his life.
- The delusion of thinking that it will help: We tend to keep returning to social media even though we do not feel happy about it. Somewhere, we believe that it can be our escape route.
- More friends on social media don’t mean we are more socially active: Virtual friends can’t provide us with the kind of feeling and support that we get by physically interacting with our real-life friends. It takes real social interaction to keep up our friendships, and we can handle only some friends at a time.
In the course of time, these social networking sites have done more harm than good and made us digital fools sitting in front of our gadgets all the time and ruining our health.
Ana Miller is a creative writer. Her topics of interest and expertise range from psychology to all sorts of disciplines such as science and news.
