August Winds

With a beating heart I deleted my original Facebook account this week after 18 years of almost daily use. It was a brutal severance, a savage cut, and it left me stunned and nauseous for a while. And then I felt fine, elated even; I had weaned and prepared with expert guidance from my years of research into my own mental health problems. My lifelong struggle to cope with generalized anxiety disorder (or GAD, which is marked by excessive, exaggerated anxiety and worry about everyday life events for no obvious reason), Adult ADHD, and complex post-traumatic stress disorder (sometimes abbreviated to c-PTSD or CPTSD which is a condition where you experience some symptoms of PTSD along with some additional symptoms, such as: difficulty controlling your emotions. feeling very angry or distrustful towards the world). For a long time I was angry and anxious every time I opened my Facebook feed. For a person clinically prone to depression, Facebook is a bad pill.

You may find that your screen time increases as you experience situational depression. Some people may find comfort in escaping into highlight reels and trending topics. Others might cling to the euphoric hits from every “likes” or seek out like-minded people online to confirm their point of view.

A 2014 review[i] proposed that social media and depression may be part of a destructive cycle. Those who are already living with situational depression tend to go on social media more, and their extended exposure can be associated with, or at least become a risk factor for, more symptoms of depression.

What had begun for me as a hobby that allowed me social interaction with people who shared my unusual interests had become a vapid noisy scene in which too many parakeets shrieked a persistent chorus of panicked carnival caricatures and grotesque ghouls. Facebook was once a place where I could talk about things that those in the Real World, in my life, thought boring or annoying. I won’t forget the fun of the first pages I joined, and the thrill when I immediately received friend requests off these which endure to this day, along with many other invaluable friendships made online. The longer I stayed on Facebook, however, the more I discovered how duplicitous an environment it is, and after too many bad experiences with the wrong people, I was increasingly disenchanted with what I saw on my feed every day.

The use of Facebook … could be a double-edged sword as social networking sites provide their members with utilitarian, social and self-enhancing benefits, but at the same time, can produce negative well-being, work-life balance, and work performance consequences (Turel et al., 2011a,b, 2014; Turel and Serenko, 2012; Turel, 2015). Primarily, Facebook provides its members with the opportunity to interact with many different people, called “Facebook friends.” Through these interactions users, especially those with low self-esteem and low life satisfaction can improve their psychological well-being, (Ellison et al., 2007). However, these rewarding interactions can lead to excessive use of such sites, up to the level of addiction (Turel and Serenko, 2012; Turel et al., 2014), especially for individuals with low self-esteem, low self-efficacy and other “problematic” characteristics (Brand et al., 2014), and those with strong need for escapism (Xu et al., 2012) … the use of Facebook can also be associated with other psychological problems, beyond addiction. We specifically suggest that the use of Facebook, and perhaps other social media sites, can promote false presentation of the self, which we presume to be unhealthy based on false-self theories (Rogers, 1959; Winnicott, 1960), because it can ultimately lead to reduced wellbeing and promote various psychological pathologies. Unlike other online destinations, such as portals, news websites and even blogs, where one can comment either anonymously or under a fake name, social networking sites require their users to expose themselves, not just in terms of names, but also in terms of friends, activities, images, feelings, and preferences. As a result, some users decide, consciously or unconsciously, to present an identity or a self that deviates from their true-self (if such a thing really exists). Presumably, and assuming rationality, these users self-enhance their true identity to match a desired one, but would unlikely play down their true identity.

False self-presentation, to a certain degree, is not a phenomenon that was invented in the digital age. People often present themselves in a manner which is inconsistent with who they really are and with their set of real beliefs and values. The gap between the real self and the ideal self is called incongruity (Rogers, 1959); and it could lead to the creation of “false self” (Winnicott, 1960) which is a more defensive, protective self that hides one’s “true self.” [ii]

However fake and manipulative the social media arena is, it is a seductive arena and I lived inside it more intensely than most people do for the better part of two decades. I can say with complete honesty today that, if I had the choice to undo those 18 years, I would not have signed up for Facebook. But that is my personal experience and I do not begrudge those who continue to enjoy that platform in a healthy and meaningful way. I want to talk a lot about neurodiversity and the social psychology of social media on this blog, but for now I hope my old and faithful friends will join me here to chat from time to time.

For a view into my daily activities and to keep up with my beautiful animals, you can follow me on Instagram.

[i] Daniel Kardefelt-Winther,

A conceptual and methodological critique of internet addiction research: Towards a model of compensatory internet use,

Computers in Human Behavior,

Volume 31,

2014,

Pages 351-354,

ISSN 0747-5632,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.059.

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563213004093)

[ii] Gil-Or O, Levi-Belz Y, Turel O. The “Facebook-self”: characteristics and psychological predictors of false self-presentation on Facebook. Front Psychol. 2015 Feb 17;6:99. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00099. Erratum in: Front Psychol. 2018 Apr 30;9:652. PMID: 25741299; PMCID: PMC4330900.

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