The impacts of social media & technology on our mental health

Headshot of Mark Debus

Transcription:

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.

Patti Harman (00:06):

Hello and welcome to the Dig-In podcast. I'm your host Patti Harman, editor in chief of Digital Insurance. Do you remember a time when you didn't always carry your cell phone or when you weren't on social media? We live in a very connected world, and there are times when I wish I could just unplug from everything. While I appreciate the convenience of being aware of what's going on in the world, especially since it's kind of an important part of a journalist's job, I think that sometimes we suffer from information overload. Add in social media, and we are just bombarded with information regardless of whether it's true or not. This constant exposure to social media and information can have a negative effect if we don't know how to turn it off effectively. And some studies have shown that it can be particularly detrimental for adolescents and young adults. Joining me today to look at some of the impacts of social media and other technologies on our mental health is Mark Debus, the clinical manager of behavioral health at Sedgwick. Thank you so much for joining us today to talk about this interesting subject, Mark.

Mark Debus (01:18):

Thanks, Patti, my pleasure. Yeah, it is an interesting topic, isn't it? And especially now in an election year. I'm not sure when this is going to air, but we're coming up on a big election and I swear social media is going out of control lately.

Patti Harman (01:37):

Yes.

Mark Debus (01:38):

It's such a stressor for everybody.

Patti Harman (01:41):

It really is. So I thought maybe we could start with something easy, such as why are we so drawn to using and following people on social media? For some folks, it seems to really highlight their fear of missing out on things, and so they're tracking people on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and whatever other opportunities there are. So why is this so important to us?

Mark Debus (02:11):

Well, you made a really good point. I mean, the whole fomo, the fear of missing out is really key, but there's a lot of other things that are kind of driving eyes and traffic towards social media. I think the big one is anxiety about current events, and I mentioned before the election year, but just other things just in the media in general. We want to stay involved, we want to stay connected. But I think another thing is that we also want to feel validated. A lot of people drive themselves towards social media usage because they want to feel validation about their feelings, their perceptions, their take on the world, if you want to look at it that way. And they need some type of outside validation for that. We've sort of become accustomed to that. This whole society is kind of built on likes now and reactions, and there's a certain currency to that that people really develop a lot of their sense of their self-worth and validation through likes. And I think that's something that's really a driving force. And then of course, the hunger for connection. We saw a huge surge in social media usage during the pandemic when people are kind of in a lockdown or maybe isolating and social media became their only outlet for connection to other people, their peer groups, their community at large. And so I think all of those things combined, plus the fact that we're in an election year and all these things are really driving this almost the sense of frenzy toward this connection and engagement with social media.

Patti Harman (03:54):

I appreciate being able to use social media. I have family that lives all around the world. And so for us, social media is a great way to connect and kind of message each other and stay involved in each other's lives. But I think there's a danger in terms of when you go outside of the familiar and you start looking and measuring your worth against what other people think and are saying. And I mentioned earlier that there can be some risks to constantly being on social media, especially for young adults. Can you share a little bit more insight on that? What are the risks and what does overexposure look like?

Mark Debus (04:37):

And before I get into that, I mean I do want to preface this with and just your experience and my experience too. There are definitely benefits to the use of social media. I mean, we don't want to discount that. I mean, it is a great tool for connecting with people, especially long distance, maintaining relationships with people, loved ones across the miles that you may not be able to see on a day-to-day basis. And it sort of has replaced talking to people on the phone even. And social media and it's simplest form is texting, and that's a form of engagement with people across distances. And so I mean, I don't want to discount that there's some great benefits to social media. It's a wonderful tool that's evolved over the last decade, 15 years or so, and that we've really become reliant on it as a way of connecting with loved ones and our friends and our community.

(05:36):

But there are some downsides to it. And I think we talked about earlier, especially with young adults, especially with adolescents in general, we're looking at the ages of 10 to 25. Those individuals when they're in that age group of this 15-year span where a lot of your critical thinking abilities are sort of formed. And there is a lot of targeting that happens in this age group with social media. And a lot of the companies that are promoting these services really are focusing on trying to influence this group and influence not always in a very positive way. And so there are some dangers that are associated with this particular age group is very easily influenced, but I don't want to single them out specifically. Certainly adults are easily influenced too when it comes to social media. But what we're also looking at is this particular group has a developing sense of critical thinking skills, permanency, other things that are going on developmentally for this age group, the peer group, the outside group is much more impactful for their development than their immediate family.

(06:53):

And that's something developmentally that happens during adolescence. And so the peer group has been substituted with social media. The social media has become their peer group in a lot of ways different than maybe the friends that they would see at school or their neighborhood or that sort of thing. Social media has kind of taken the place of that. And so a lot of their developmental needs are being met through basically an algorithm in a lot of ways. And that can be really dangerous. And so I think it's something that parents need to be really focused on, if not necessarily putting controls on it, but at least being mindful that is a strong influence in their developing teens.

Patti Harman (07:43):

I went out of the country earlier this year and one of the things that I was looking forward to was the ability to actually unplug from some of these different outlets from social media, from Slack, from teams, from when you think of how connected we are, it's really pretty amazing. And how important is it for adults to monitor our usage of social media and even other technology that we use on a regular basis?

Mark Debus (08:16):

Well, I think one thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people get their news from social media now. I mean even more so than print journalism and TV and other means. I mean, most your sense of what's going on in the world is really influenced by what is fed to you through social media. And you're right, I mean there's so many different things we could talk about. We could talk about Twitter or X or whatever it's called now, Slack, it could be all sorts of different things, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, blah, blah, blah, TikTok. And it seems like every time get a grasp on what's current, something else is going to come up. And so there's so many different things to really focus on. But I think in general, we need to be really mindful that as we're consuming this, we need to be mindful that this is a product, that there is a company behind it that has a profit model or a business model to engage you.

(09:19):

And their algorithm or their method of doing this is to stimulate strong emotions in an individual. And sometimes early on, it used to be based on good feelings, but now it's not. They have found that the driver behind engagement really is negative feelings. So the more stirred up you are, the more engaged you're going to be in that platform, that social media platform. And so we need to be mindful that their business model is to actually make you feel bad and that is going to drive your engagement. So what they're trying to do is they're trying to sell a product, get you click on their advertisers, keep you engaged in that particular platform for as long as possible through a matter of manipulating your emotions. And that's their algorithm. And they've been pretty transparent about that's what they're doing. Congress has done investigations on this, and this is nothing new, but I think we lose sight of that because we think, oh, this is our friends doing this, or these are suggested feeds or something like that.

(10:34):

But when actually there's this whole business model designed to make you feel bad and stir you up and make you feel anxious, so you stay connected to this particular platform, whatever it is, it's TikTok or Facebook or Instagram or whatever. And so as adults as of this, we just need to be mindful of that, Hey, this isn't particularly our own individual choice. This is something that's fed to us that we are ingesting and we are metabolizing and then making some decisions based on this faulty model that's designed to stir us up. And so I think the more that we can be transparent about that and aware of that happening, the better educated we can be in consuming this information that's out there.

Patti Harman (11:28):

And those comments really kind of segue nicely into my next question, which was, does social media present an unrealistic picture of real life, which is definitely what you just addressed and do some people have trouble sometimes I think separating that fact from fiction. And it's interesting because you'll talk to some people and they're like, well, I saw it on social media, so it must be true.

Mark Debus (11:52):

Right? Right, exactly right. I saw it on the news. That must be true. It's the same type of thing. I heard it from a friend and it just becomes sort of this gossip mill after a while. So yes, to answer your question, it is unrealistic, but it's unrealistic in a lot of different ways. There is this emergence of fake news. I mean, we just kind of put a shortcut on it. We call it fake news, that there are bad agents out there who are creating things that look like legitimate news that are biased. And this has been something that's been in journalism for as long as journalism's been around. I mean, this is nothing new. All of journalism has some type of opinion based into it or baked into it. That's not earth shattering to think of that. But when it comes to social media and you're being bombarded visually with this information and sometimes with altered images and videos, and now the use of AI in some of this creation and artwork and photographs that aren't really real, it becomes really confusing as a consumer to discern which is real and which is fake.

(13:24):

And the lines are really blurred. I mean, we know objectively that a lot of this information is fake, but it's harder to get to the what is actually true and be able to see with our own eyes, okay, this isn't actually reality or some of the information. Some of these articles are now developed by AI and it's really hard to tell if a human wrote it or an AI wrote it. And so some of that information can get really skewed in a very politicized way or a very opinionated way or some other type of influential commodity way that becomes very confusing as a consumer to discern what's true and what's false. And so I think that's just part of it. The fake news is part of it. The other part that you see a lot with social media is these images of these idealized bodies or how we present ourselves to the world.

(14:27):

And I don't want to point out certain celebrities or something, but you know what I'm talking about. Adolescents will follow certain celebrities that have these images out there of partying and looking a certain way in a very filtered way that isn't really how normal people look. And when you're talking about, we mentioned adolescents before, I think this is also something that adults face as well, is that we look at this image of idealized celebrity bodies and looks and attractiveness and all that, and we compare that to our own lumpy, dumpy lifestyle that doesn't match up with that. And we feel bad. And I think, again, it's designed to make you feel bad. It's designed to provide a comparison between you and this idealized version that can get really confusing. And when you have that confusion, when you have this image of yourself that doesn't quite match up with this idealized version of what you want that's presented in social media, it can really do a number on your self-esteem. And people can get a lot of mental health reactions to that. I mean a lot of depression, anxiety, all those things, body dysmorphia, all sorts of things can happen that I don't know if they're necessarily intended or not, but it is a reaction that a lot of users do end up having and that can be really detrimental for that.

Patti Harman (16:05):

Well, and when you think about what we as consumers even post on social media, yes, I posted a picture of myself in Mykonos. I may not post a picture of when the cat throws up or when the kids get sick all night or real life gets really dirty and messy. And that's not usually what people post on social media. We just want to promote, oh, look how great my life is today, or whatever it is. And I think that kind of plays into and reinforces the fact that, oh, life is so great on social media, but it's just a sliver in time. And I don't think that people see it that way.

Mark Debus (16:48):

And it's not just a sliver in time, but it's also a sliver in time through a filter. When we look at it, I have an iPhone and most cameras now have filters that you can do when you're taking selfies. And so I'm not taking a warts and all wrinkles and all selfie picture of myself and post it on Facebook. I'm putting it through a filter, a portrait filter that smooths out my wrinkles and makes me look highlighted in some way or contoured in some way that is particularly attractive. And I'm taking probably 10 or 12 photos before I pick the one that I want to show my friends and family. And so I've already curated my image in a way, and I'm not a particularly vain person on social media. I don't post a lot of stuff, but when I do, I want to make sure I look okay. So when people look at this, they're thinking, oh, Mark is having a good day. And look how the light is hitting him in just a certain way, not realizing that, yeah, that's a filter, but I'm okay with that because that's how I want to present myself to my friends and family because I don't want them to see that, okay, here I am eating a pint of ice cream and having the worst day ever. I'm not posting that on social media. I'm posting, I'm looking pretty good today.

(18:21):

But all of those images, I mean, we're posting this best version of ourselves over and over and over again. And if you're someone who's struggling with depression or anxiety or body dysmorphia and you're sitting at home and you're looking at social media and you're seeing your friends and family having fantastic vacations in Mykonos where the light is hitting them just perfectly, there's no evidence of a cat throwing up or whatever, you begin to have these unrealistic ideas of what's going on in the world, and you compare it to yourself and you see yourself in a more miserable light because you're not out there experiencing this fantastic existence that you think is real, but really is just very curated and it becomes very confusing. And I'm a logical person. I've been on this planet for 50-some years. I know how to think critically, but there are times where I'm looking at some of these photos of these friends and families that I haven't seen in a while, and I'm thinking, wow, that looks beautiful, and why don't I have that? And it really does take a number on your mental health over time.

Patti Harman (19:38):

Well, on that note, we're going to take a short break and we'll be back in just a few minutes...Welcome back to the Dig In podcast. We're chatting with Mark Debus, the clinical manager of behavioral health at Sedgwick about the impact of social media on our mental health. So we were talking a little bit earlier, Mark and I was saying how we live in a technologically connected world where people can reach us through Slack, teams, text messaging, email and other apps. Does that create stress on our mental health and in what ways? And I'm really hoping that you say yes because I'm thinking because there have been days I've had with my head and I'm like, just make it stop.

Mark Debus (20:33):

Well, you're in luck. Yes, it does take its toll on us. All of us, even those who are, I am in the mental health field, and even though I'm mindful that it's taking a toll on me, it still takes a toll on me and everybody I talk to, it does eventually take its toll. And people that say that it doesn't, and they're immune to it, I would say 95% of them are probably lying to you because it's just unavoidable. And I think if anyone has truly queued into social media in any capacity, understands at least on a logical basis that a lot of this isn't real or a lot of it is heightened or curated or filtered or whatever, but it doesn't, even though you may know that logically, emotionally, it still impacts you and it does take its toll on you over time.

Patti Harman (21:36):

Okay. And when it takes its toll on us, can it affect us physically or in other ways as well, do you think?

Mark Debus (21:46):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So physically, I mean we're looking at kind of in general symptoms of stress is what we're looking at. So it does affect our, well, I mean, first of all, it affects our sleep, especially you're consuming social media right before bed, it can definitely affect our sleep. There's a lot of research out there that indicates that there's certain light exposure with your eyes and all that can affect your brain patterns and all that that can disrupt your sleep over time or even just that night. So yes, it does that. It's also time-consuming. It's easy to become addicted. I don't want to use, I say addicted sort of with a lowercase a because the verdict is still out on that, but there's definitely some addictive qualities to consuming social media where I don't know if you get this or not with your cell phone app, but mine tells me every week how many hours a day I spent on social media and it gives me a little report and it goes up and it went up a lot during the pandemic.

(22:56):

It's come down a little bit since then, but I engage quite a bit and it tells me how many hours a day. And if you look at that, that's a lot of time. I mean, if it's three hours, six hours, whatever it is, that's a big chunk of your day. And so just time, how much time you're spending on this versus time you're spending, actually spending time with family, spending time doing things that are enjoyable to you, spending time on doing things that are productive and valuable to your day-to-Day existence. This is time away from all those activities that you didn't used to have 10, 15 years ago. And so it's just a time suck. And so that's going to affect you not only from a sleeping perspective, although it could go into your sleeping, but it also affects you in how much time it's taken away from other activities and pursuits towards your overall physical health, like eating well or exercising or getting outside and walking around or just any of those basic things.

(24:03):

We sit, when we look at social media, we don't often stand, we often sit, we look at social media. Well, that's sedentary stuff that we're doing, and that can take its toll on you physically. So there's a lot of different ways that it can affect you. And then also just emotionally and stress wise, there's all sorts of impacts on blood pressure and digestion and all sorts of other physical aspects that can happen or physical symptoms that can happen when you are feeling stressed out. And remember we talked about earlier that the algorithms of these social medias is designed to stir you up emotionally, and when you are stirred up emotionally and engaged in this social media platform, whatever it is, you are feeling something and you're feeling usually anxious and anxiety is going to take its toll on your heart, your breathing, all sorts of things, and it's going to affect your digestion. People are going to have all sorts of physical symptoms related to stress reactions.

Patti Harman (25:05):

Yeah, I think a lot of times people don't realize what an impact stress can have on the different areas of their life. Then if you're able to remove some of those stressors it makes, it's like, wow, why do I feel so much better? And it's because you've made some sort of a change in your life. We discussed earlier the need to be in the know, but how can we step back from technology and social media in a healthy way?

Mark Debus (25:33):

I think we need to look at a two-prong approach to this. I mean, first off, there's an approach that you can do as an adult consumer, but the second thing I think we, and maybe we call back some of the information we talked about earlier is how do you protect more vulnerable people like adolescents and developing minds in their social media? And I just want to point out and mention this, that the American Psychological Association came out with a health advisory in April, 2023, I believe, on social media use among adolescents. And so it's got some really good tips on how parents can monitor their adolescents' use of social media, how they can explain certain phenomena, filters and those types of things to help their adolescents navigate the social media landscape in a more educated way. But I'll tell you, I mean some of those tips and suggestions in the APAs guide are really helpful for adult users as well.

(26:35):

It's good to be reminded that a lot of what you're seeing is not real and a lot of what you're seeing is manipulated and manipulated for a purpose which is a profit margin or profit model for the platforms themselves. And so I think it's just, it's helpful to have those reminders as you engage in social media in hopefully a more healthy way. But there are some things practical steps, and I'll just give you a couple suggestions that I use right now with clients disengage from social media about an hour before bedtime. That's a real practical thing. Turn off all screens, even TV if you can, an hour before your bedtime. That way your mind has an opportunity to kind of quiet itself and get into a sleep mindset so you can have better sleep at night so you're not as stimulated right before going to bed because again, social media and just a lot of media in general, TV and whatnot is designed to stir you up and designed to make you feel anxious and bad. And so if you can disconnect and just turn it off an hour before bedtime, it's going to help with your quality of your sleep right away, you're going to know as a benefit right away. The other thing I think is really important is maybe install an app on limiting how much social media you engage in or just in general, how much screen time you're engaging in on a day-to-day basis.

(28:10):

I talked about the app before that tells you how much time you spent per day. Well, you can actually go into your settings and create limits on how much time you engage in certain platforms and don't do it cold turkey. Don't say, okay, tomorrow I'm going to stop all immediate usage altogether because let's be realistic. That's not going to happen for most people, that's not sustainable. But you can make incremental changes. So if you are one of these people that engages in, I don't know, three hours of Instagram a day, for example, or Twitter, whatever it is, then maybe tomorrow, limit it to two hours and do that for a couple weeks per day and then gradually get that down to an hour or 30 minutes. Ideally, you don't want to spend more than an hour of your day on social media. That's sort of the sweet spot. It's not real realistic for most people, but it is a target. I think some people have been able to get rid of it altogether. Others struggle around 30 to 45 minutes. It seems reasonable. I think an hour is probably a sweet spot for most people, but really anything that you can do to reduce how much time you're spending on that, and I think it's going to be helpful. And I think it's important if you're trying to develop healthy habits, is to do it an incremental way that's sustainable.

Patti Harman (29:37):

And it's easier when you make those smaller changes a little bit at a time as opposed to trying to go cold turkey.

Mark Debus (29:43):

Absolutely.

Patti Harman (29:45):

Where can people go if they know they're suffering from technology or social media overload? Is there someone that they can talk to, a place where a way to get some assistance or I don't even know, maybe even accountability to help them? And maybe that means going to your friends or family members and saying, Hey, don't let me spend more than an hour or two hours on my phone, which I don't know how well that'll work, but I'm just trying to think how could people find some assistance if they felt it was really necessary?

Mark Debus (30:22):

My first thought was going to be, ironically, turn to your friends on social media and ask for advice because I've actually seen that question posed on Reddit and other things, which unfortunately, I'm a little too engaged in sometimes. I think the key thing is to have an accountability buddy if you can. Whether that's your sister, your brother, your best friend, your mom, whoever have someone that you know is also maybe rethinking their relationship to social media and have an agreement with each other, kind of like a workout buddy you would do if you're trying to engage in some type of exercise program, have something similar with a social media buddy that you communicate, maybe text something that's a little bit or maybe even a phone call. Remember phone calls. So someone that you can touch base with on a weekly basis just to have that type of support built in someone that has your best interest at heart and that you can also support and turn.

(31:30):

So I think having that type of one-on-one relationship can be tremendously supportive if you're trying to wean yourself off gradually from social media overuse for example. That's the first step. The other thing obviously is if you are feeling so overwhelmed and so anxious from social media engagement that your self-esteem has taken a lot of bruising over the last couple of years, sometimes professional help can be a lifesaver for everybody. So counseling, talk to a counselor. Most employers offer some type of employee assistance program or colleague assistance program that offers some free counseling, usually confidential from their employers, separate from health insurance. That's something that a lot of employers offer. Look into that. Most health insurance plans or I think almost all health insurance plans now offer some mental health parity where you can access mental health benefits, see a therapist that's covered by your health if you don't have health insurance.

(32:41):

There's a lot of social service agencies that do that type of thing as well. So I mean there's a lot of help available. Ironically, there's a lot of helpful apps out there. I mean, it's different than social media, but there's some useful apps that can help with things that are really beneficial for clearing your mind like a mindfulness app or a meditation app or even things like yoga or movement or some other things that can really help structure some interventions for you so you can become more mindful in less focused on problematic use of social media that can help you disengage from that in a very healthy way.

Patti Harman (33:25):

Wow, that's great. We have covered a lot in the last half hour, so is there anything that I haven't asked you that is important for our listeners to know or understand about the risks associated with using social media or even technology in general? I

Mark Debus (33:45):

Think, I mean, one thing I want to make sure that everyone takes away, and I'm going to sound like a broken record Patti, so forgive me, but I think it's really important. If you have nothing else that you take away from this, be mindful that social media companies are for-profit companies. They are out to get your eyes engaged in their platform long as you, as long as they can possibly squeeze you to do that. And so part of their way of doing that, the part of their way keeping you engaged is to make you feel bad, is to stir you up, is to make you feel anxious. I mean, that is their goal and we need to be mindful of that is happening and be educated users of social media. There is a lot of great benefits of social media, as we mentioned at the top of the podcast, connections with loved ones, especially long distance, especially people that are from your past and you'd want to keep in touch with. There's a lot of great things that can happen with social media engagement. I don't want to discount that, but we also need to be educated consumers that there is this dark side to it, and the more we're aware of it, I think the better prepared we are to arm ourselves and engage with it responsibly.

Patti Harman (35:11):

Well, thank you so much for sharing your insights with our audience today, Mark, and thank you to our listeners for listening to the Dig-In podcast. I produced this episode with audio production by Adnan Khan. Special thanks this week to Mark Debus of Sedgwick for joining us. Please rate us, review us, and subscribe to our content at dig-in.com/subscribe From Digital Insurance, I'm Patti Harman and thank you for listening.