Week 7: social media and smartphones affecting our mental health
Smartphones affecting our emotional levels:
Defamation of mental health is on the rise.
process post
Intro
Our emotions and communications govern us throughout our day-to-day lives, connecting us and bringing us together, while smartphones are helping us make a digital and connected world, allowing us to instantly access social media and helping us stay connected throughout our daily lives.” A 2015 report from the Pew Research Center found that 24 percent of teenagers ages 13-17 say they’re online “almost constantly” and that 73 percent have a smartphone or access to one. According to the research, this age group of North American kids has never known a world without the internet” (Lenhart, 2015). Providing us with an understanding of how much current teenagers from the age group are going into with their smartphone usage and the effects on their mental health, hearing the research gives us the acceptance and urgency to understanding this impact of smartphones with remarks mentioning this “almost constantly” usage with “never known a world without the internet” making it clear how smartphones are connected to their daily lives.
As smartphones are making it possible to connect and normalize communication through video and via texts and influencing the wants and need to connect in person; demonstrated in Figure 1, the data set suggests how much average time individuals spend on their social media which is to say increasing smartphone usage. “The average American teenager spends more time on Tik Tok every day than socializing at parties, events or on the phone with friends combined. According to a study of 400,000 families with children between the ages of 4 and 18 from around the world (with a focus on the US, UK and Spain), US children use TikTok for 99 minutes a day. Between 2020 and 2021, the duration increased (from 87 to 99 minutes), which may be due to growing popularity but may also be a result of the Corona pandemic” (Qustodio, 2021). Commonly, most smartphone users use social media, making it a tool that brings the world around us, giving us a medium for finding world news, communicating and socializing with friends and family; conveying our emotions and reactions. Emotionally becoming reliant on following others’ lives more than their own current state of mind, by using apps like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram as mentioned in Figure 1. Personally, being a part of millennials and gen Z, my perspective and experience on the transition of smartphones as users will bridge an argument, as to why the new generation of smartphone users are investing entirely their mental health and emotional levels at risk; All of these downsides of using smartphones correlate with our emotions, fluctuating and impacting us on a daily basis; affecting our mental health inevitably throughout, giving us a deeper question as to what truly governs and protects our emotional levels and mental health, is it the user or the use case? By presenting this lens with correlative proof and factual statistics that argue, with the usage of smartphone millennials, gen z and future generation from across the world are on the raise to defamation of their mental health and is more likely to be emotionally attached to their smartphones as part of their lives, evidently affecting our mental health negatively more than ever, the negative impacts that smartphones can have on a person’s mental health can be many issues, such as smartphones correlation to anxiety, depression, lack of sleep, etc.
In most cases, we think to communicate and connect via smartphones especially for using social media, for example, take into consideration young adults using smartphones to pass their leisure activity, like while commuting from place to place on trains, buses, aeroplanes or ferries, or maybe an individual who is just working from home and relaxing at home surfing social media, but rarely do we ever take a closer inspection at how our emotions and moods change when we take and edit a selfie for social media all these small actions reflect on us in our behavioural level, how it connects us to our moods and attitudes connect to an object, as a cognitive scientist and usability engineer Donald Norman explained in his book and ted talk, stating, “once we are used to these actions affecting our emotions it naturally becomes part of our selves like a routine” (Norman, 2006), demonstrated as myself being a constant smartphone user listening to music while taking shower is my routine. This can be considered both reflective as well as behaviour level, again clarifying my previous example, Currently, there are more cases people only experienced using phones with the functionality of using social media; a primary reason to use a smartphone, for example, there many teens using phones without a sim card to still be satisfied with using social media to connect, while camera functionality, the ability of entertainment is another secondary need and option for expression of one’s self. According to Lakeside BHS’s interviews “As a species, we are very highly attuned to reading social cues,” says Dr. Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and author of “No question kids are missing out on very critical social skills. In a way, texting and online communication—it’s not like it creates a nonverbal learning disability, but it puts everybody in a nonverbal disabled context, where body language, facial expression, and even the smallest kinds of vocal reactions are rendered invisible” (Chalos, 2020). Providing a correlation to how our mental and emotional health is being affected by the use of smartphones, through our behavioural level; i.e., impacting our communicational skills. This connects to Norman’s behavioural level “… Ease of use can be related to the behavioural level of design, which, according to designer Donald Norman (2006) is subconscious and relates to “the pleasure of using an object (p.35)”. Helping us to bridge our understanding of how smartphones are more connected in shaping our mental and emotional health and is more than just an “object” in our lives.
Mindlessly wasting too much time on social media affects our productivity, sleep patterns, and emotions on a level that correlates to a raise in depression and anxiety, as spending time on social media can increase anxiety levels, researcher and phycologist Jane Twenge proves and demonstrates that in figure 3 and stating in a reputable magazine article, “The more time teens spend looking at screens, the more likely they are to report symptoms of depression and more likely to be unhappy, lonely and suffer anxiety”(Twenge, 2017). I use smartphones as a tool to control my emotional level throughout the day, being part of the population of this research dataset, additionally, I tend not to affiliate on social media as it affects my mental health, I don’t post anything and use social media as a reflective source that allows me to understand the people around me and communicate to my wellbeing; whereas also feel the anxiety of other’s not so kind critiques that may impact my mental and emotional health which most of the time leads me to not hang out with friends as the graph suggest and stay more connected via smartphone usage. According to the University of Zurich’s journal article “We found that both extraversion and neuroticism were associated with a higher number of screen wakeups per day, and conscientiousness was related to shorter session durations per day. Our results regarding extraversion are broadly in line with previous studies showing connections between extraversion with higher frequency and duration of calls or other communication behaviour” (Beierle et al., 2020). How emotional and mental health is connected demonstrated in figure 3 correlates to those impacts on making friendships, and going outside; evidently affecting their attitude and behaviour. Additionally, graphs demonstrated in figures 4 & 5 give us factual and statistical findings that reflect how smartphones whether through social media usage or higher frequency and duration of calls are affecting our communicational behaviour, which is internally connected to our neuroticism and causing mental and emotional health defamation, prone to causing anxiety, disturbing sleep patterns; more likely in contributing users feelings of loneliness and depression.
Moreover, through research we can correlate social anxiety, feeling lonely and having disruptive sleep patterns leading to defamation in our mental and emotional levels, being a constant smartphone user, I can only fear how impactful social media and our smartphone usage nowadays have consumed us millennials, gen z and the future generations on a daily basis. Researcher and psychologist Villa presents her finding on how similar the usage of smartphones is to drugs in our psychology, “ Giving us the understanding that according to her survey “90% of people never leave home without their phones” and almost half of the young adults interviewed were mentally attached to the level where “they can not live without its usage” which is enough to restate the raise and the urgency of that extensive smartphone usage is having significant detrimental impacts on younger generations.
Despite much evidence found through more than enough research, there will be different opinions on it and acceptance towards the concerns of defamation that smartphones are bringing to the new generation’s mental and emotional health, “The studies [she] reviews largely ignore social contexts and how people differ, instead reporting only average effects and correlations. But I suspect that the kids are going to be ok” (Cavanagh, 2017). Also being a phycologist, Cavanagh argues the research presented through Jean Twenge’s magazine article could be biased towards only the population that has reported their issues on the impacts smartphones have made in their lives and overall, it’s a better communicative platform. However, I rebuttal and agree with Twenge that despite having a better communicational medium the effects and ripples that smartphones are making in our daily lives cannot be undermined as, “The 2016 CNN/Common Sense Media poll found that 50 percent of teens, especially of this generation, are addicted to their cell phones, unable to function without it; making smartphones truly addicting, as the brain circuitry associated with addiction is the same regardless of the content of the addiction, which wreaks havoc on our kids’ mental lives” (Chalos, 2020). Again, confirms and correlates to researcher Villa’s findings as smartphone usages compared to drug addiction and psychiatrists Chaos, who explains, addiction regardless its “content” through smartphones “wreak havoc” on mental health, enough to give evidence as to why Twenge’s research to can not be biased as multiple reputable sources agree.
All in all, we can lower the usage of smartphones to less distract our lives, maybe the rules that prohibit the usage of smartphones in classrooms and meetings or workplaces can help our mental health by correlating to the facts and statistics presented; keeping in check with our emotional levels at times that will help us have a better attitude and communicational behaviour that can allow the future generation to be both communicational driven through social media as well as in person effectively processing into a better mental and emotional control. It is clear from expert views and factual statistical graphs that our generation’s mental health and emotional levels are more than they should be reliant on smartphone usage and social media influence. Our emotional levels were never as vulnerable as it is currently, we must be vigilant with our usage of smartphones throughout our daily lives and gain more authority with our emotions, and focus more on what is in front of us, the reality is far different than what social media shows from time to time, the influence of social media with smartphones making escapism prevalent and easier and likely to increasing depression and anxiety than what our mental health requires; influencing young adults to addicting usage, thus we have to be more cautious about these impacts that are upon future generations. Always being social media shy and affected by its impact on my emotions and mental health, I truly agree of being “emotionally depleted” from smartphone usage, from playing games or scrolling through social media and reading people’s criticisms, takes a toll on my day-to-day activities; certainly, needing some chill out time, hanging out with friends and having an in-person conversation and praying time to time to find solace in myself is how I try to cope with its impact. We all need to be kind to ourselves and focus on what is good for us, accepting and understanding to become more vigilant with our usage of smartphones is necessary in order to control and manifest healthy emotions and mental health; spreading kindness and knowledge of its impacts will definitely help towards combating our future’s mental health defamation through smartphones.
Reference
Beierle, F., Probst, T., Allemand, M., Zimmermann, J., Pryss, R., Neff, P., Schlee, W., Stieger, S., & Budimir, S. (2020). Frequency and duration of daily smartphone usage in relation to personality traits. Digital Psychology, 1(1), 20–28. https://doi.org/10.24989/dp.v1i1.1821
Cavanagh, S. R. (2017, August 6). No, smartphones are not destroying a generation. Psychology Today. Retrieved November 21, 2022, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/once-more-feeling/201708/no-smartphones-are-not-destroying-generation
Chalos, M. R. (2020, June 18). Smartphones and anxious kids: Mental health issues and the iGeneration. Lakeside BHS. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://lakesidebhs.com/mental-health/smartphones-and-anxious-kids-mental-health-issues-and-the-igeneration/
Ehmke, R. (2022, October 26). How using social media affects teenagers. Child Mind Institute. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/#indirect-communication
Lenhart, A. (2015, April 9). Teens, Social media & Technology Overview 2015. Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/
Norman, D. (2006). Emotional design: why we love/hate everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
Qustodio, L. L. C. (2021). Living and learning in a digital world. North Carolina. Retrieved November 12, 2022, from https://static.qustodio.com/public-site/uploads/ADR_2022_en_040422.pdf.
Twenge, J. M. (2017, September 8). Have smartphones destroyed a generation? The Atlantic. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/has-the-smartphone-destroyed-a-generation/534198/
Villa, L. (2019, November 7). Is the new drug of choice smartphones? Project Know. Retrieved November 10, 2022, from https://projectknow.com/teen/smartphone-use/