Survey Results and Statements
I did a Google Forms and asked four questions:
- How old are you?
- How much do you spend on Social Media? (a day)
- How do you think your mental health is?
- Please write some examples on how has social media affected your mental health, this is anonymous so you don’t have to put your name if you don’t feel comfortable<3
I posted it on Snapchat, Instagram, and multiple Discord servers and I was lucky enough to have roughly one hundred people fill it out.
The data of how many hours people spend on Social Media to How they feel-
Some entries that stood out to me the most-
“sometimes makes my confidence lowered tbh cus of beauty standards but at the same time can boost my confidence (if that makes sense)“
“I mean it’s a hit or miss it’s okay some days and some days not”
“Social media affected my mental health through comparison (their life/appearance looks perfect despite only seeing a photo or short video about them). Social media also affected my mental health through the hatred pointed towards people all the time. The amount of hatred that can be seen or experienced online is not normal and incomparable to the amount you actually experience in person.“
“honestly i think being as attached to my phone as i am had impacted my mental health tremendously. i doom scroll a lot and its a way for me to procrastinate easier“
“Social media has basically killed all person interaction and relationships in my opinion. Nothing is better without social media to keep us engaged. We completely lost any type of self respect.”
“Social Media has taken my mind off of the issues that affect my mental health. There are pros and cons. While it takes your mind off and sort of gives you an escape, you shouldn’t be escaping from your problems, but rather go through and overcome them instead. Social Media also might show you content that might worsen your health and make rash and unthought decisions.”
“I doom scroll a lot. I have trouble doing things that aren’t on a screen, and my already terrible attention span (adhd) has suffered as a result. I also compare myself to people a lot. It feels like everyone is doing so much better than me. I quit a job for another one that ended up being really abusive so I wasn’t there for long. Now I’m really broke and have a ton of free time. It sucks seeing people out in the world having fun while I’m stuck at home”
“It can get stressful when interacting with hateful people! Especially in the BST community . I find it best to take a step back when it gets to be too much . Otherwise my mental health definitely suffers!“
“The weird compulsion to compare my life with others. The feeling of missing out, seeing your peers live it up while your in the same spot, feeling like you’re missing out on your best years while people on social media are living it up. Seeing people who are genuinely bad people succeed, it’s discouraging you see people who do bad things get the good in life while you struggle to make ends meat. The biggest problem for me and social media is the fact that when I’m using it I don’t feel real, meaning I just don’t feel there in the moment I’m just a mindless zombie who for some reason can’t put the phone down.”
“i compare my life to others, my self esteem is lower, i doom scroll as a way to distract myself”
“i have been struggling with my mental health ever since i was in elementary school. on top of that i was a “bigger” kid and that has kind of transferred to my adult life so far. social media is structured in a way that once you like one post with a certain body type, more like that will come up. it’s very damaging to a young person with self esteem issues and people on the internet are just rude in general. i have been told i need to go on diets, get weight loss surgery, not eat, only drink water, intermittent fast, count calories, everything. and while i think im doing better, there’s always someone on social media saying the opposite.”
“i used to be less anxious before i started to use social media. in some ways it has ruined my communication skills with others and makes me less productive. some of the positives of it is I’m always updated with family friends and life. its a thing i would love to be off buts its a crucial part of my future.”
“I think our brains shouldn’t have access to the dopamine levels it does when we scroll on social media, the constant gratification of it. I think the way we’re able to receive so much information at once via social media also impacts us because we were not made to receive so much information at once so it feels very draining to me. I feel like I’ve forgotten what it’s like to let myself be bored because I’m always so quick to grab my phone and scroll through. I think the amount of screen time and information I receive on a daily via social media whether it’s through words or images has made me more depressed. I’ve noticed a big difference in the way I am when I’m off social media vs when I’m on.”
“when i’m stressed out i find myself watching videos that make me feel better knowing there’s other people going through similar situations“
“sometimes if i’m having a bad day and i scroll on tiktok and i see a sad video it’ll make me more sad but not because the content is sad but because it makes me realise that’s how i actually feel and then i feel sad if that makes sense?”
“It’s actually my escape to make me feel better throughout the day”