Quarantine means that we’re stuck inside with most of us far away from our friends and family. With this ban on social gatherings comes an increase in social media engagement. More than ever before, we’re relying on our phones to stay in touch with our loved ones and stay connected to our networks. According to a report from App Annie, the daily time spent in apps on Android devices increased by 20% in the first quarter of 2020 while consumer spending in both iOS and Android apps was also up by 15% and 5%, setting a new record for in-app spending for a single quarter at $23.4 billion worldwide. Social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok have been at the center of this uptake.
This increase in use welcomes the familiar warnings about the damaging effects that social media has on our mental health wellbeing. Much of the critique surrounding the rise of social media has to do with its contributions to the growing sense of disconnection in our society which can result in social isolation and mental illnesses such as anxiety and depression. It’s true, an insufficient amount of human interaction can create feelings of disconnection, but social media can also help with this problem. In a time when we’re already at risk of disconnection because of our enforced social isolation, we must use social media in a very meticulous way so that it works to our benefit; creating positive feelings of connection and social fulfillment rather than exacerbating negative feelings.
According to the Global Council on Brain Health, although communicating through social media cannot replace in-person communication, it can help individuals maintain and even strengthen their relationships. It allows us to learn about how our friends and family are coping and how they’re keeping busy during quarantine. Social media has been proven to even have the potential to alleviate problems such as isolation, lack of interaction, and social exchange. Is this surprising? Obviously not all interactions will produce these effects. Passively engaging with content and one-click feedback mechanisms such as likes will not boost someone’s mood significantly. Seeking content from strangers isn’t a sustainable way to boost your mood either. The interactions that produce these beneficial effects require engaging with people you know and care about, whether that be through video chatting or even by writing personalized posts and comments. Studies show that even a sentence-long comment, if personalized by a close friend, can remind recipients of the meaningful relationships in their lives.
How one utilizes their social relationships via social media will also impact their feelings of connectedness. The perceived realness of interactions through social media differs according to which platform is used and the media elements they possess. Studies show that compared to text-based social media, image-based social media provides users with a significant reduction in self-reported loneliness and an increase in psychological well-being. The ability to mitigate an undesirable psychological state and induce a positive is due to the ability of images to facilitate a social presence or mimic the experience of communicating with an actual person instead of an object. Take platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook for example. These platforms are geared toward developing and maintaining relationships by streamlining and augmenting the process of sharing image and video files to recreate the intimacy of social presence. Using these platforms to share pictures and videos with your friends and family can help to bridge the distance between you.
We’re all capable of using social media to increase our connectedness, it may just require a more conscious effort than mindlessly scrolling through our feeds. Try creating group chats with your friends, family, classmates, and coworkers. Try Scheduling weekly or even daily video calls to catch up with one another. We will receive the most benefit from social media if we’re using it to actively and meaningfully engage with one another. It’s in a time when we’re apart from one another where we must stay as connected as possible.