- Position‹2 of 2
- Social media is bad for your mental health
- Argument1 of 2›
Social media makes us compare ourselves to others
The way social media portrays the lives of others as perfect means that it makes us compare ourselves to the people we see online.
The argument
Proponents of this position argue that the harm social media does to mental health is not incidental to the platforms but built into how they work, and that the mechanism is comparison. Social media presents its users with a continuous stream of other people's lives, and because that stream is always available and always updating, the comparison it invites is not occasional but constant. Two forms of this are picked out. The first is the fear of missing out. Following the accounts of friends and acquaintances means being shown, in detail and as it happens, the occasions one was not part of: the gathering one was not invited to, the trip one did not take. Not being invited to something used to be mostly something a person never learned about. Now the absence is documented and delivered, and the natural response is anxiety about one's standing among the people one knows. The second is comparison against a standard that is not real. Influencers make their lives look perfect for a living; presenting an enviable existence is the work, not a by-product of it. Friends and acquaintances do something similar without being paid for it, sharing only highlights and keeping the dull or painful moments off the feed. The user, who experiences their own life unedited and in full, is therefore measuring everything about themselves against the best of everyone else. The comparison is rigged, but it does not feel rigged while it is happening. On this view the effect is cultural rather than merely individual. What the platforms produce is a culture of anxiety - an environment in which measuring oneself against others is the ordinary mode of participation, and in which the feeling of falling short is the normal condition of taking part. That is why proponents conclude that social media is bad for your mental health.
Premises
Counter-arguments
We can feel more connected to others due to social media. Rather than leaving us out, social media has the power to bring people together, especially if they live far away.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Social media can keep us connected to others, not left out.