How Instagram is Ruining Your Health -- by Tanya Schunk

How often do you grab your phone to “check the time” but instead you look to see if you’ve received any new notifications and then don’t even remember what time it is? How often do you want to get ready for the day and just want to check your emails and later find yourself scrolling through your Instagram feed for about an hour? And how do you feel after spending this time on Instagram and other social media platforms? 
In an article about Instagram Anxiety, the Hollywood Reporter says that the average teenager spends about 6 hours daily on their electronic devices and most of the time they are surfing on social media sites. This is more time than we spend on eating. Most people would not admit that they had spent this much time there, but somehow still feel a little guilty.

As Wikipedia describes social media platforms, they are “interactive computer- mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.” All these apps are consequently created for sharing your personal life. What nobody realises, is that they are also designed to be addictive. Lior Frenkel explains in his Ted Talk that there are workshops on how to get people hooked to your app. They use negative emotions like boredom, loneliness or dissatisfaction to make them addictive.

The creators of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, did a great job and attracted over 1 billion active users since June 2018. The app allows users to upload photos and videos. They can be edited with filters and be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. It is possible to “like”, share and comment on pictures. All in all it’s another app to express yourself through photos and gain approval from other people.

While scrolling through your Instagram feed, what do you see? People always smiling? Fitness models with the perfect body? Or your friends going on cool vacations while you’re sitting on your couch with a bag of chips and your favorite TV series on screen? Most people only share their personal highlight reels and with this they create an illusion of a totally perfect life. The Harvard Psychology Department found out that sharing information about ourselves activates the part in our brains for pleasure. This feeling of pleasure is the same that is caused by eating good food, earning money and even having sex. But how does this affect other people?

A Study of the Royal Society for Public Health showed that social media in general has a high impact on people. They asked 1,500 14- to 24-year-olds about the effects five networks have on their mental health. While Youtube was ranked as even having positive effects on the most people, Instagram was ranked as the worst network. The photosharing app causes bullying, body image anxiety, fear of missing out (FOMO) and feelings of loneliness and depression.

But how do we get in such bad conditions only by using an app?

Our brain is constantly collecting data. Its intentions are to keep us safe, to search for valuable resources around us and at least to figure out where we stand in the social hierarchy. And this is the point where it gets interesting.

Imagine searching your place in the social hierarchy before you started to use social media. To identify where someone stands in the “pyramid” of society, our brain concentrates on his physique (to analyse his strength), his friends (his influence) and his belongings (stating his wealth). The people with the most power and the most influence make around 5-10% of students at your school. Another 5-10% make students who are under your state. They have close to no friends and with this nearly no influence and impact on the social hierarchy. The other 80% of students are just as average as you are.

Now regarding the impact of social media on your life nowadays. All you see on social media is absolute perfection. Perfect vacations, perfect bodies, people running perfect businesses. This makes your brain believe that these people are actually around you in your real life and then your brain starts competing with those strong personalities. You start to think that they are way better than you in every situation in life. From this you slip from being in the average section to think that you are part of the section of “nobodies”. This causes an increase of anxiety, insomnia, panic attacks, depression and addiction.

But all this is not the whole truth. Instagram is a kind of perfect fantasy world. No one has such a perfect life as they present it on their profiles. Everyone is only posting the best images. Most of us are wasting hours by selecting the best out of tons of photos that look completely similar and editing them with several filters that create a more tanned skin or reduce the pimples on our nose.

This also creates a false self-reflection for us. We change our own appearance to please others. We are “like”-addicted. This addiction has similar symptoms as drug or alcohol addiction and as it’s possible to overcome these, you can overcome the social media addiction. A popular method is doing a “digital detox”. That means you quit social media for a certain amount of time and try to catch back up in the real world. You regain a certain awareness about your environment and your connection to closely related people. Digital detox can help you embrace your new life independent of your electronic devices and social media platforms.

If you personally feel the same way and think that social media devours you, a good way to help yourself is to gain some distance from the networks. There are also organisations and campaigns like the website undigitize.me, “the official day and night of unplugging” or the campaign “phone faced down!”. You should talk to your parents and friends so they can help you get out of your Insta-anxiety. Always remember that you are not alone.