You’ve had a bit of a bad day, you’ve been working remotely or have spent a lot of time by yourself. You’re feeling a bit down and in need of some human connection.
You’re feeling a bit lonely. It doesn’t feel good, and no one wants to feel that way.
Your first thought might be to call or text a friend or family member, but they’re all busy or not around. So what do you do? How can you alleviate these feelings of loneliness?
The logical solution is social media. It makes sense. If you can’t talk to someone you know, through social media you can sort of connect with other people, right? See what your old school friends are up to on Instagram, or take a front-row seat to the lives of influencers and celebrities, or maybe just watch some funny videos on TikTok. And maybe, briefly, it helps!
The chemicals in your brain react nicely to seeing human faces but then that gnawing feeling creeps back in, this time with even more bite. Look how great your old school friends are doing, look how they’re surrounded by friends and living such a happy life. And those celebrities.
They’re so beautiful and their lives look so luxurious and glamorous. And the TikTok videos are so engaging and entertaining, look at how attractive and talented these content creators are, they look like they’re having so much fun doing all sorts of cool things. You put your phone down. There’s that lonely feeling again. It feels a bit worse.
You feel more inadequate and more lonely than before you opened those social media apps. But then you remember that fleeting nice feeling when you open Instagram, and those little dopamine hits when you scroll to another TikTok video.
You know that nice feeling – when that “feel good hormone” starts to circulate. So back you go. The cycle continues.
Does this ring true for you? It does for me and many other people across the globe. It’s a fundamental and inescapable part of social media – what it’s specifically engineered to do. It can trap you in a cycle of inadequacy and loneliness, making you believe it’s the solution when it’s making the problem worse.
This cycle – this link between feeling lonely and the use of social media – has been identified by experts in the field. There are bundles of academic papers on the subject. two most significant findings are that “problematic” social media use and feelings of loneliness significantly impact the other in both directions, and that this issue is affecting younger people more intensely.
The concept of “problematic” social media use is worth unpacking because social media isn’t entirely bad! There are many benefits including staying connected to people you care about and having access to information and content that matters to you.
But left unchecked, social media can – and does – amplify loneliness. So how can we stop this vicious circle and overcome feelings of loneliness arising from social media usage? Thankfully several evidence-based strategies can help.
1. Reduce social media usage
This may seem obvious one, but it’s obvious for a reason. It is widely agreed by researchers and experts that the most effective way to stop social media exacerbating loneliness is to cut down how much time you spend on social media.
Given the addictive properties baked into social media platforms, this can be a challenge, but one which is worth tackling. Depending on your situation, it might be worth taking a short break from social media, or you could gradually reduce usage through setting app usage timers on your phone. The key is reducing your social media usage in a workable and achievable way.
2. Practise healthy social media engagement
Social media does have its benefits, but when you engage with social media in unhealthy way, its downsides are more likely to rear their heads and have a negative effect on your life. Research shows that loneliness and problematic social media usage are linked in a cyclical way, so it’s very important to understand how to practice healthy social media engagement. What does that look like?
– Prioritise active vs passive engagement. This means leaving comments and engaging with content instead of simply scrolling.
– Reduce intense or obsessive engagement. Aside from the amount of time spent on social media, it’s also common for usage to become overly intense or obsessive, where you’re compulsively refreshing a feed or page or immediately clicking on a notification. If this is the case, consider ways to de-power the strength of this engagement, such as by turning off push notifications.
– Positive engagement. Reduce social media activities that bring you negative feelings. If you’re following people or pages that consistently make you feel bad about yourself, unfollow them. Just like you would stop spending time with a toxic friend in real life, you have the power to set boundaries that make a positive impact on your mental health.
3. Think about your reasons for using social media.
There can be a variety of motivators to use social media, such as for entertainment, to meet new people, to maintain relationships, or to feel involved with other people’s lives. Research shows that of these motivations, using social media primarily to maintain relationships is more strongly associated with increasing levels of loneliness.
As such, it’s worth thinking about why you’re using social media. If you are trying to maintain existing relationships through social media, consider if it’s possible to redirect this goal offline and try and foster these relationships in the real world, as social media can’t effectively replicate the social bonding that exists in real world interactions.
