Summer is rapidly approaching. As much as we all hate to admit it, we know it's only a matter of three weeks standing between us and summer. Am I dreading it? No. Am I overjoyed? No. I don't really know how to feel. I'm ready to go home for a bit, but not for three months. I'm not ready to leave Freshman Year behind and I'm especially not ready to leave my dorm. I met all my best friends through Clark Hall and it's so sad to think that we will all be living apart next year. If I'm being completely honest, it's one of my biggest fears for the summer. My anxiety comes from not knowing, not knowing how these relationships will be this summer, not knowing what it will be like in the fall when we come back, and not knowing how I will react and adapt to these natural changes.
Social Media is likely going to help my friends and I stay in touch throughout the summer. In this way social media can be very beneficial. It allows people to continually stay in contact with people that they may not be able to see day to day. I have personally loved it when I came to college because I can stay in touch with my friends from home. I also like being able to see, through stories and Instagram posts, what my home friends are up to. However it can also lead to comparison. In the beginning of the year I posted about how it can be hard when you see everyone living their best life and you feel like you aren't.
Social Media can truly be the best and the worst thing. Growing up we didn't have social media and when I think back to my happiest memories they often involve my childhood and playing outside, no technology involved. Social media is such a time sucker. There was one week recently when I looked and my time on social media was almost 36 hours. That is a day and a half of my week that was spent engulfed in my phone and what other people were doing. Social media has been proven to lead to depression within our generation. According to the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, "Because adolescence is a critical period of transition in terms of identify formation, peer and romantic relationship building, and neuro-emotional development, generally, adolescents have been theorized to be especially vulnerable to the depressogenic aspects of Social Networking Sites use" (Cunningham).
I know I said earlier that I know social media will help my friends and I to stay together, but I also know it could hurt me in ways. (So off topic, but I just saw a jeep truck, ew, I hate those things.) Anyways, I know that I struggle with comparison and constantly comparing myself to those around me. That is why recently I continue to say that I am working to find confidence in myself, from myself, and not from others or from social media. I know that coming into next year it will be hard for me to see my friends that are living together hanging out without me, but I also know that that is normal and that I will be making my own memories with all of my sorority sisters at the same time. It is hard to put things into perspective, but I think when it comes to social media it is so so important to always have a perspective lens on. Nothing is ever as it seems. Something may be edited, or falsely portrayed. You never know what went on behind the picture or the video and you always need to keep in mind that you are where you are for a reason.
Because of the comparison piece of social media, young adults struggle much more with depression and feeling lonely. When one sees that people are hanging out and they are simply in their rooms, it causes their body to send signals of loneliness to their brain. The loneliness epidemic is real and it is or has in the past affected every single one of us. Matt D'Avella does an amazing job explaining the loneliness epidemic in this video: https://youtu.be/m3aIQuMWJCA.
So what can we do? How we can stop this negative thought cycle? The easy answer is stop using social media. However, we all know how insanely unrealistic that is. Unless everyone agrees to get rid of social media, no one is going to stop using it. We can however do our own research into how it is affecting us. I try to ask myself the question "How do I feel?" before and after I spend time on social media to see if it positively or negatively impacted my mood. More often than not, I am negatively affected. I still continue to use it but at least I am noticing these trends within myself. I think another thing we can all do is keep our perspective lens in mind. I also think it is important to be present in the moments when we are together with people in person. I notice more and more when talking to someone that they are on their phones. I think if you are feeling a need to be on social media while being in a conversation with someone or just in the presence of people, that some reevaluating needs to be done. Social media is just as addicting as alcohol and nicotine are. I encourage everyone to take a step back and think about how your mental health is being affected by social media. Have these conversations with your friends, my whole sociology class this semester has been spent talking about this and it is really eye opening to talk to so many different people and get so many different perspectives and insights on this topic.
As always, I love you all and always know how amazing you are. Don't compare yourself to others. God made you unique and gave you the special talents he wanted you to be able to bring to the world. Let your light shine bright and don't let others, or social media, diminish it!
References:
Cunningham, Simone, Chloe C. Hudson, and Kate Harkness. "Social Media and Depression Symptoms: A Meta-Analysis." Journal of abnormal child psychology 49.2 (2021): 241-53. ProQuest. 19 Apr. 2022 .
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