Social Media: Your Mental Health Vampire

Since 2004 when Facebook was launched by Mark Zuckerberg, new ways for people to socialize were opened. Facebook became so popular to the extent where almost everyone with a smartphone was using it.

 

Later on WhatsApp, Instagram, X (previous Twitter) and TikTok followed as the other means of social communication.

 

Research done in October 2023 revealed that up to 61.4% of the world’s population uses social media. The average daily usage is 2 hours and 24 minutes.

 

 

In January 2021, there were about 5.40 million active social media users in Tanzania. The number has increased by 900 thousand (+20%) between 2020 and 2021.

 

Personally I cannot forget Facebook in my life because that’s a place where I met my fiancée, currently my beloved wife, Agnes Henerico. I have also been making money online since 2019.

 

These social networks have played a very great role in aspects of social communication, exchanging ideas, delivering news, showcasing lifestyles, and getting informed on different matters as well as providing a big market for business.

 

I first learned about the death of our late President, Dr. John Pombe Maghufuli, through WhatsApp status even before I watched news on Television. Imagine that!

 

Social media has continued to have its importance in our community. However, something else has been born from this usefulness. “Social media addiction” – the mental vampire!

 

Social media addiction is the state of compulsive obsessiveness towards social issues in the media to the extent that it poses problems in one’s daily life which may affect his/her health.

 

Social media, like other addictions, causes the release of dopamine (pleasure hormone) especially when you open to see some interesting news or gossip every day and later the brain gets used to that kind of reward.

 

After a time it develops a compulsive need to keep enjoying. That’s how people find themselves in addiction.

 

By 2023, 10% of all social media users in United States of America were addicted.

 

What negative effects has social media posed on our mental health?

I call social media a vampire, sucking blood from people whether they like it or not. It has really caused a lot of mental disturbance like other addictive’s.

Here are 3 major mental effects posed by addiction to social media use:

 

1. Loss of attention

As many other addictions in our daily life, social media has affected our attention to nature.

 

If you noticed these days during travel, meeting or gatherings, people are no longer attentive to external environment or even to the speakers. Their presence is mostly partial.

 

Nothing brings a beautiful feeling like looking at nature while travelling. It makes you feel good, it clears your brain. That’s the real meaning of adventure.

 

But currently if someone is travelling on bus, they will spend most of time on the phone and less time to view nature.

 

Most people no longer enjoy this opportunity of brain cleansing, instead they spend 80% of their travel time on Social media.

 

In meetings also, it has been a common practice for people to scroll their phones while the speaker is talking on the front. Partial listening and hence partial learning has led to failure in exploiting and learning effectively as intended.

 

If you can’t listen, how can you challenge accordingly?

 

This has gone far to affect how people react to external stimuli. Lack of attention makes people emotional, judgmental and aggressive.

 

To understand, you need to listen to the last point before responding. However most people don’t listen attentively to understand, they listen half to argue.

 

According to a research by V.A Mohammad published in 12 April 2021, the time at which one focuses on a task (attention span) has also dropped down from 12 seconds of concentration to 8 seconds due to social media use hence reducing productivity.

 

Lack of attention makes our brain tired. Multitasking due to loss of focus confuses our brains and as a matter of fact it subjects us to brain jamming, forgetfulness and inefficiency in our daily tasks.

 

Have you noticed how much time you take to accomplish a simple task because of your phone? As you are marking papers, a message from the group or email will pop in. You will be driven to open and read it for 3 minutes, then as you come back to continue, a Facebook or email notification comes in and you open it to read it for another 4 minutes.

 

This means something which could be accomplished in 10 minutes takes 30 minutes.

 

One research found out that, an average office worker will check their email inbox 30 times every hour and will pick up their phones more than 1,500 times per week amounting to 3 hours and 16 minutes a day.

 

Because of this continuous distractions, it has caused our brain to adapt unsettledness. Not being able to focus and finish one task at a time.

 

A great number of people nowadays cannot focus on one thing for more than one minute without shifting their minds to something else. This has led into loss of both time and efficiency.

 

What about relationships?

This mental problem has gone far to affect relationships also. Couples are no longer focusing on each other, leave alone looking at each other. Most of the time they are looking at their phones.

 

 

This has greatly caused the mental slavery of thinking that women or men in Facebook or Instagram are better looking than the person in the house. This is madness indeed!

 

AI vs. Lazy individuals

The reason why artificial intelligence is going to replace humans in terms of productivity is this attention loss which we have encountered. A robot has no distractions hence its work is fast and efficient

 

Have you experienced the difference when your phone is off or broken or lost and you’re using a kitochi (non-smart phone)? How much task do you accomplish?

 

And how about when your phone is active? How much task do you accomplish in the same time? I know you have the answer.

 

Attention is key to any success, unfortunately social media is hijacking it.

 

2. Depression

Social media addiction brings depression in the same way as cocaine or alcohol.

 

Remember how it works. Social media surfing brings about dopamine release which stimulates the brain. Dopamine release stimulates dopamine receptors in the brain which makes a social media user feel pleasure when surfing.

 

The more you’re exposed, the more dopamine release increases, the more fake pleasure you would feel.

 

Now what happens when you have no Internet bundle, or lost phone, or you went to the area where there is no Internet? Most addicts will experience the so called fear of missing out (FMO) and this will make their ‘always’ high dopamine’s fall down.

 

Now this is what brings about depression. Most people feel lonely, left out and bored.

 

 

This will present with anger behaviors, desperation to replace the phone, insomnia, boredom and not finding pleasure in most things.

 

In 2018, a lancet study found that the less time people spend on social media, the less symptoms of depression and loneliness they felt.

 

A 2015 study found that Facebook users who felt envy while on the networking site were more likely to develop symptoms of depression.

 

The comparison a person makes when seeing people who present as more successful makes one feel like they are not doing enough. This has led people to take poor decisions such as dropping out of school, stopping projects since some people on social media seem to be making more money without doing much, forgetting that behind every success there is hard work.

 

Behind the smiling faces on social media lies a difficult life and a lot of faking. Unfortunately social media users are prone to believing anything on social media without reasoning.

 

Disappointments coming from comparing ourselves with the people we see on social media is one of the major causes of depression.

 

It steals our piece of mind and makes us feel like we are lazy or we are wasting time in our projects. It’s better to attain the inspiration from the people and business we see physically than those we see only on social media.

 

3. Fear

Being so much exposed to social media imposes on you a lot of news which most are unnecessary and some are lies. However seeing these news most of the time can induce a lot of fear or scary imaginations.

 

In 2019 during the Covid-19 epidemic, people with smartphones were affected twice the ones with no smartphones.

 

Also most countries which allowed daily news release of covid-19 deaths on social media were more affected than the countries which didn’t give out death reports.

 

The big reason was accessibility of too much information leading to generation of lots of fear in the mind. People who never knew even signs of Covid-19 in the villages experienced no deaths.

 

It came into attention that the Covid-19 symptoms were more severe in the most informed communities than the information naïve people.

 

The witnessing of accidents, mass deaths, strange diseases, theft cases, rapes and assaults has been a major inducer of anxiety and the fear of the unknown.

 

 

This anxiety is the major reason we have large number of people attending hospitals sometimes for just a minor headache.

 

Have you noticed how peaceful you feel when you stay without having a smartphone for weeks? Or not watching TV for some days?

 

Do you know why most people choose to go to the village during their holidays? They claim they are going to rest, however what they mean by resting is staying out of chaos of information’s mostly from social media.

 

Staying away from the fear associated with too much social media helps you sleep early, and peacefully. And as a result, your brain becomes very light and focused.

 

The social media induced fear is real and has invaded your mental health. The bad part of it is, 70% of the information from social media is fake or from untrusted sources.

 

Anyone can write what they feel on social media, but how sure are you that they are credible or legitimate? A major reason why you should minimize time spent on social media.

 

It’s on social media where you will read about unconfirmed cases concerning a new deadly virus in China – more deadly than Covid-19, killing millions of people.

 

You will see how couples divorce everyday on social media, how your government is bad, and among other issues.

 

With too much fear, people become anxious and paranoid hence hesitating in most of their decisions. That’s social media posing as a mental hack.

 

What to be done?

Our mental health is very important for us to live a peaceful and successful life.

 

Loss of attention, depression and fear will obviously become obstacles for you to prosper. This is because with those three problems, your mind is already sick.

 

A sick mind cannot produce anything significant. To avoid this, most of the highly productive people spend less time on the social media. This helps their brains to be clean.

 

When your brain is clean, your mental energy increases and with high mental energy, your performance in anything you do will be very high.

 

According to a research conducted by Sarah Stanley Fallaw (the director of research for the Affluent Market Institute and author of the book “The Next Millionaire Next Door: Enduring Strategies for Building Wealth”), in which she surveyed more than 600 millionaires in America, it shows a person’s daily activities can influence how much wealth they build.

 

She found out that Millionaires and billionaires typically read, exercise, and work more, but spend less time on social media.

 

You need to adapt the habits of highly successful people if you want to taste any sweetness of success.

 

Apparently, the reason why people spend too much on social media is due to the mind-set of wanting to relax their mind from the tiredness of work or boredom due to lack of something to do.

 

Keeping their time loose without any special time table, hence every time they find themselves jumping to Facebook, Instagram or Tweeter to burn some time.

 

How to solve this behavior?

Start by creating important schedules which keep you focused all day. This time you will be busy but in a productive way.

 

Have you noticed that if you’re really busy with important matters like examination preparations, you can go 3 days without visiting Instagram or Facebook and yet nothing serious happens!

 

It’s just your fear of missing out (FMO) which pushes you to surf a lot.

 

Put your important matters in a schedule from morning to evening. The goal is not to avoid visiting social media, the goal is to stay focused on your goals and then kill some minutes on social media.

 

 

Here are two habits which will help you avoid spending much time on social media. These technics worked very successfully for my mental health and I hope they will do the same to you.

 

Remember: it’s difficult to kill old habits and build new ones, so it just requires decision making.

 

1. Start reading books

This is the best way to burn your time constructively. Find an interesting book and read it whenever you start getting bored with anything.

 

Remember most of the time you find yourself on social media is the time you’re on your way to work or coming back from work, and when you’re idle at home or workplace. What if you fill these dead times with something constructive?

 

The difference here is, when you read during boredom you’re utilizing that dead time positively hence you’re killing two birds with one stone, relaxing but also building yourself. Another advantage is reducing the usage of your Internet bundle and hence saving up your money.

 

In 2022 when I was working at a hospital in Temeke – Dar es Salaam, I used to spend more than 4 hours on the bus going and coming back to Kibaha. It was so boring to stay on the bus seat all that time.

 

So I had two choices, to use that time to surf on social media like everyone else or to use it constructively. I decided I will use it to read books.

 

I worked for 6 months in Temeke and I read about 10 books during that time. Now I remember and feel like that was a game changer for me.

 

The problem with social media is that it contains a mixture of things both constructive and destructive, keep an eye on all those issues and you arrive home with a tired brain and less gain.

 

Spending 2 hours reading about how Manara and Dula Makabila are fighting for a woman doesn’t build you at all! But imagine spending two hours reading how Kevin Hart became rich. It will boost you spirit to hustle more.

 

2. Normalize being offline

It’s okay to be offline for some time, you will not miss out that much. If the news is that important, you will definitely hear it from others. What happens when you lose your smartphone and stay offline for a month? Do you lose anything?

 

The only person who will lose much is the one doing business online, but what about you?

 

Make it normal to switch off your data and focus on matters at hand and later you can go in to check for few minutes and go off.

 

It doesn’t help, in any way, spending all day reading about how Zuchu and Diamond are dating, how Messi is paid highly, how Mr Makonda was on Bodaboda during campaign time, etc.

 

How do these things bring changes in your life? Imagine ignoring your important matters or doing them partially due to such distractions? Where does it leave you?

 

Mind you, there is no award or reward for being the best social media surfer.

 

It’s okay to disappear from social media for as long as all your day schedule is attended fully and then later you can just visit for a short time. It’s not easy though due to a lot of people being affected by the fear of missing out.

 

Some people sleep and wake up in Instagram trying to read about other people affairs and other people businesses instead of focusing on their own.

 

Lastly, if you’re doing business online, just simplify it so that customers can reach you offline. You cannot keep surfing in Facebook and Instagram waiting for customers to text you, that’s very unprofessional and will steal a lot of your time.

 

Remember, when everything is lost, only your mind will remain. So the clearer you mind is, the better decisions and reactions you will make. This all depends on how clean you mental health is.

 

A confused mental space is most likely to get lost in alcoholism, drug abuse, emotional reactions and mediocrity. Protect your mental health from social media dramas.