Oversharing Online

    

 The birth of social media networking platforms seemed to coincide with some of my most formative teenage years. I was too young to have a MySpace page, but the perfect age to grow with Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. The platforms were so new to so many, including me. They were an exciting new way to stay connected with my friends from all over the world but, like anything, there are negatives to the platforms.

    It seems that, now, someone is a minority if they don't have a social media page. With so many options to choose from it seems as if there is something for everyone. In fact, I don't think I know a single peer who doesn't use some form of social media. With so many people on so many apps, it can be easy to get caught up with how many likes, follows, and comments your content gets on your platform of choice. Likes, follows, and comments seem to have become forms of social currency. The more your post gets, the more "socially rich" one might appear to be. This aspect of social currency poses a question... is there an "ideal" number of friends, likes, and comments to make someone feel better about themselves? Personally, I feel like this question comes with a need for a deeper conversation about the relationship between mental health and social media. 

In that conversation, it is important to assess how social media impacts one's self-worth and confidence. While I would love to say that the number of friends someone has on social media shouldn't impact one's mental health, I understand how it would do so. In many ways, I feel like this number is based on social comparison rather than there being a standard number. When one compares their number of follows to those of a peer, they enter a social comparison. Upon this social comparison, the user then makes the decision of whether they feel like they compare to their peers. If someone has fewer followers they might be inclined to feel lesser than the other. In the infographic below, the results of a poll from the American Psychiatric Association is displayed. I believe that this infographic best states how hard it is to say whether or not the number of followers someone has correlated with their mental health. 

It seems that a user's mental health when comparing likes, follows, and comments to others carry the same danger as the platforms themselves. It is incredibly easy to believe everything that you see on the internet. This becomes even easier when it is reposted by someone else that you follow and trust. It is this process that has made social media platforms such a hotspot for fake news and phishing. Pair this with how easily someone can hack into others' social media accounts (see infographic below for more info), these platforms provide drawbacks that seem to be comparable to the positive aspects of the platforms. Although they provide their users with the chance to stay up-to-date with people they would otherwise be unable to, they create a space that could negatively impact the mental and physical health of their users.