The Real Harm of Using Social Media
I’m writing this from a purely subjective point of view. From reading theories about self and personality as well as observing real-life experiences of people, I have gained a personal insight into why social media use could be harmful on a deeply intrinsic level.
We often talk about the negative consequences and physical harms of using too much social media and technology in general. It also influences us to think and act in a certain way consciously and unconsciously.
But the topic that I would like to talk about is self-image. I have come across people who have experienced a feeling of ‘relief’ when they stopped social media usage.
A girl in my class, who had a lot of Instagram followers as she regularly updated her feed with beautiful and aesthetic pictures, suddenly deleted her account. She then talked about how in doing so, she felt a burden being lifted off her life. I also read about a few former online celebrities who are upset, despite their massive following, deleting their pages entirely from all social networks.
Although it is understandable that this behaviour is a result of self-esteem issues and peer pressure online, distorted self-image could also be an underlying cause. A famous humanistic psychologist, Carl Rogers, stated that there are two versions of the self that exist in our minds- the real self and the ideal self.
Simply put, the real self is who we really are, the best version of ourselves that, if all goes well, we’ll someday become. Whereas the ideal self is a version that we would aspire to be, but it is out of our hands and often unrealistic, a standard one cannot meet despite working hard. A person’s ideal self is not consistent with what happens in real life.
Hence, a difference may exist between a person’s ideal-self and reality. This is called the incongruity. The gap between a person’s “I am” and “I should be” decides if there is congruence in the person’s self-image.
According to Rogers, we want to feel, experience and behave in ways which are consistent with our self-image and which reflect what we would like to be like, our ideal-self. The closer our self-image and ideal-self are to each other, the more consistent or congruent we are and the higher our sense of self-worth. A person is said to be in a state of incongruity if some of the totality of their experience is unacceptable to them and is distorted in the self-image.
Connecting these people’s experiences with this theory of self, I think what people try to portray on their social media pages is their ideal-self. Although it is common sense to share only the best pictures and thoughts online, I feel it messes with the person’s self-image without them realizing so. Their mind registers a dissonance between these two versions of themselves, causing them to feel discomfort internally.
I think this could be a reason for social media breakdowns and deletion of accounts altogether (at which people fail miserably since it does not fix the root cause). It could also be used to explain the erratic and often strange behaviour of celebrities, as the maintenance of a certain image is of great importance to them, with the added pressure of media and fans.
Well, this was just my opinion, something I like to dwell on in my free time. I would love to listen to other opinions, thoughts or theories on the same. Thank you for reading.
