Post by JoannaL on Dec 7, 2019 13:48:47 GMT -5
For the Sake of Your Emotional/Physical Health, Get off Facebook
Do you want to be healthy, both emotionally and physically? Researchers at UC San Diego and Yale have some simple advice for you: Limit the amount of time you spend on Facebook. While this may come across as typical anti-social media crankiness from academia, this time the advice is backed up by massive research. Holly Shakya, assistant professor at UC San Diego, and Yale professor Nicholas Christakis spent two years following 5,208 adults who are part of a Gallup long-term study. After obtaining permission, they monitored the Facebook use by these subjects directly from Facebook instead of relying on subjects to report their use. (Often people do not realize how much time they spend on the social network.) And they checked in with subjects on their emotional and physical well-being, as well as their body-mass index (BMI), over the course of two years.
“Overall, our results showed that, while real-world social networks were positively associated with overall well-being, the use of Facebook was negatively associated with overall well-being,” the researchers wrote in a Harvard Business Review article. “These results were particularly strong for mental health; most measures of Facebook use in one year predicted a decrease in mental health in a later year.”
Why is too much Facebook bad for your emotional health? Previous research has shown that the social network creates a sort of false peer pressure. Since most people are cautious about posting negative or upsetting experiences on Facebook, the social network creates a misleading environment where everyone seems to be doing better and having more fun than you are. As the researchers put it, “Exposure to the carefully curated images from others’ lives leads to negative self-comparison.”
No substitute for the real thing. But what of Facebook’s magical ability to connect you to friends and family even when they’re far away? To help you find long-lost friends and relatives? To help you keep up with what’s going on with all the important people in your life? There’s lots of research to show that having a social circle and an active social life and community leads to better health and greater longevity. The researchers wondered if a virtual social life and community would create the same benefits.
No, they don’t, as these results make clear – in fact, they have the opposite effect. In addition to negative self-comparison, the researchers note, increased use of Facebook and other social media tends to take up a lot of time and can create an illusion of closeness. To the extent that time spent on Facebook takes you away from real-world social gatherings, you lose the benefit of being part of a community, the researchers say. The same is likely true if you’re at a gathering in body, but your eyes and mind are locked on your smartphone, checking out your friends’ latest posts.
Once you give up Facebook:
You’ll be less brain dead. When you’re buried in a screen checking Facebook, you’re not paying attention to the world around you. You ignore family members. When you go someplace, you remain on your device, something you could have done at home. When you put down Facebook, you raise your head and begin looking at what’s going on around you and you’ll be more cognizant of everything – including family members and friends.
Your productivity will increase. When checking Facebook at work, a few minutes turns into a quarter-hour and before you know it, you’ve lost 30 minutes or more of productivity. Thanks to smartphones and improving mobile data speeds, you can check Facebook anywhere and this includes at work. When you give up Facebook, you’ll have to do something else to keep from being bored and this usually means the work your employer is paying you to do. Abandoning Facebook will increase your productivity.
You can focus on other things. Facebook takes up a lot of time. You can waste insane amounts of time just scrolling updates. This is especially true because Facebook no longer adheres to a chronological posting format. Putting down Facebook means you’ll be freeing up a lot of time – time that can be spent doing other things. You can spend more time with your significant other, which will strengthen your relationship. You can spend more time with friends and reconnect with them on a different level. You can get on a treadmill and lose a few pounds, get back into shape and feel better about yourself. The possibilities are literally endless because you’ll be spending time doing something constructive.
You’ll find out “like” is meaningless. Audra Rundle of The Huffington Post made an amazing point concerning this: She said liking things on Facebook is no longer a matter of actually liking the post. It’s an obligatory action to show that you have seen the post and acknowledge its existence. Many people are too close to the problem to see it directly. Taking a step back can show you just how useless the Like button is now and how few people actually care about the things they like.
You will feel more accomplished. The defining characteristic of Facebook is that you’re never done with it. There is always more to do, more to see and more to engage with. Dealing with that feeling of “never done” all day long can be emotionally and mentally draining. Doing other things will fix the problem. You can finish a book. You can finish planting a garden. You can finish washing the dishes. Pretty much any task in the real world is something you can finish. We as humans feel almost high on the sense of accomplishment. Don’t rob yourself of this feeling. Get off Facebook and finish something.
You’ll rid yourself of stalkers. Practically everyone who uses Facebook has a stalker at one time or another. This is especially true if you’re a woman or teenage girl. People can look at your photos, your updates, etc. without your permission and some people do this. Creepy guys will frequently browse the photos of their crushes. Creepy women will do the same thing (albeit less frequently). People who aren’t your “friends” and people you don’t want as friends can see your information. Even if they can’t see you directly, they can see those with whom you associate, your favorites, etc. Your less privacy-minded friend may post that the two of you are going to the mall and your stalkers will know precisely where you are. If you give up Facebook, you’ll rid yourself of these creepy individuals.
You’ll feel better about yourself. A study was conducted and has pretty much proven beyond any doubt that Facebook makes people feel bad about themselves. There are so many reasons for this. When you post a status and no one likes it, you feel as though everyone thinks you’re stupid. When you post photos and members of the opposite sex don’t comment on how good you look, you feel ugly. You’re constantly exposed to people who are happier than you are, more successful and who have stronger relationships. How is this not supposed to make you feel inferior or utterly depressed all the time? Why would you want to put yourself through this? There’s an easy way to stop and that’s by taking a break from Facebook.
You’ll feel better about the things you own. Reuters reporter Belinda Goldsmith published a piece regarding research conducted in Germany about how people feel on Facebook. The end result was that they actually become more jealous and envious of others. It may be someone posting about their new phone, car, house or other possession. There are some who get jealous when they see others in happy relationships, be it friends, boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife or family members. Facebook is a great place to brag about what you have and that means it’s also a great place to read about all the things others have that you don’t. Why would you want to put yourself through this?
You’ll realize that to Facebook, you were never anything more than a piece of advertisement-viewing data. There may be people on Facebook who legitimately care about you. However, Facebook itself couldn’t care less about you or anyone else. To Mark Zuckerberg, you are a piece of data in his giant database to be mined and exploited. Your job on Facebook is to view advertisements, spend money on Facebook games and make Zuckerberg richer. How you feel or the fact you’re stalked doesn’t matter one iota to Facebook. Would you remain in a relationship with someone who treated you that way? If your answer is no, ask yourself why you remain in a relationship with Facebook.
This probably comes across as a Facebook bash and it is to some extent. However, social media sites were created for a reason and somewhere in the past decade, we’ve all forgotten that reason and this includes you, everyone else and even the social networks themselves. It’s not about finding people, or about connecting, and creating lifelong friends anymore, it’s about fads. It’s about chain-liking status updates like a smoker chain-smokes. It’s an addiction and activity that offers nothing in return for your time. No one is saying you should delete your Facebook account – although you would be a lot happier if you did. What you should do is drastically cut your Facebook time to a fraction of what it is now, that is to no more than 30 minutes in a 24-hour time period.
Sources: Minda Zetlin, GetPocket, and Craig Childs, The Atlantic.
