How does social media affect mental health?

Social media connects us to positive messages

Question: How does social media affect mental health?
Position1 of 2›: Social media has a positive impact on your mental health
Argument‹2 of 2: Social media connects us to positive messages

Social media facilitates the spread of positive messages that people would not otherwise be privy to.

The argument

The case here rests on the fact that a social media feed is not a fixed object but something each user assembles. What a person encounters on these platforms is determined largely by the accounts they have chosen to follow. That makes the feed unusual among sources of information: a newspaper, a television channel, or a conversation at work presents whatever it presents, while a feed presents what its owner has selected. The selection is revisable at any time, at no cost, by following and unfollowing. Given that control, a feed can be curated deliberately toward the positive. By selecting the content we consume, we have the power to see positive messages on our feed, or to connect with the people who inspire us, whether writers, athletes, teachers, friends, or communities organised around something we care about. Over time the aggregate of those choices sets the emotional register of a thing many people look at dozens of times a day. The platforms also widen the range of what is available to select from. Social media has the power to connect us to uplifting and positive stories that we might not find otherwise: accounts of recovery, generosity, or achievement that are too small or too distant to reach a person through conventional channels, and that arrive only because somebody chose to share them. Without these networks most of that material would never come into view at all. Put together, the two points give the user both a wider supply of positive content and the means to choose it. Because social media connects us to positive messages, and leaves it to each person to curate their own feed, proponents argue that it can have a positive impact on mental health.

Premises

[P1]Social media can connect users to uplifting stories and inspiring people they might not otherwise encounter. [P2] By choosing which accounts to follow and which content to consume, users can curate a feed of only positive, uplifting messages. [C] Therefore, because social media connects us to positive messages, it can have a positive impact on mental health.

Counter-arguments

We do not have the power to eliminate everything but positive messages from our social media. For instance, following friends can lead to FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and feelings of isolation.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Not all uplifting messages and quotes effect us in the same way. What might make one feel better will make another feel worse.