Increased Screen Time: The Negative Impact of Being Home and On Our Phones
Every Sunday, I get a notification pop up on my iPhone telling me about my screen usage from the previous week. Is it up 5%? Is it down 10%? I’ll be honest, when it actually gives me a number of average hours I spend on my phone a day, it’s pretty embarrassing. And that was BEFORE we were in this time of social distancing and stay-at-home orders. At this point, I think many of us are spending more time on the phone and social media. I did my best to avoid that Sunday morning notification the past few weeks!
But increased screen time, especially when that screen time is directly connected to increased social media usage, can have a real impact on our mental health and body image. This past week, the effects of social media usage came up in several different sessions with clients. There have been plenty of studies showing the direct correlation between social media usage and an increase in depression and anxiety. We also know that, based on plenty of research, increased social media use can negatively affect our body image. And that research is based on our usage pre-Coronavirus! Now, we’re more socially isolated than ever before and investing even more time on social media. Yikes!
But why? Why does social media make us feel so bad about ourselves? And why do we keep going back to it?! So so many of us use our phones and social media as a way to zone out or distract ourselves from everything else. When you are standing in line by yourself, what’s the first thing you reach for? Not your wallet so you are ready to check out when it is your turn? Ha, probably not. I’m going to guess it’s your phone. It has become a way to protect ourselves from feeling bored. But being stuck at home right now, it’s kind of hard to escape the boredom.
Social media’s negative effects on our sense of self and our mood can be significant and it is worth mentioning some of the pitfalls.
FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and increased feelings of isolation - A few weeks ago, I saw a group of old friends had a game night over Zoom. They all posted screenshots and funny happenings in their Instagram stories. Watching each of their stories the next day, I couldn’t help but feel a little sad about not being invited to join them. I felt like I was missing out on some great fun. Now, when I take a second to pause, I’ve not lived in the same city as this group of friends for several years now and I’ve grown apart from many of them. But increased feelings of isolation and seeing the fun they were having together definitely increased my own feelings of FOMO. My feelings are valid, of course, it made me sad, but social media was only reminding me that I’m not there with them. Had I not seen their posts, I probably would not have given a second thought to if they were doing Zoom nights as a friend group or not. I would have not known I was missing out.
Should-ing all over myself and comparisons- Goodness, how many of us are scrolling through social media these days and seeing all of our friends doing something new or interesting and end up beating ourselves up for not doing that too. All of the new at-home workouts, cooking and baking adventures, and creative projects that people are taking on right now are amazing. I’m so impressed by each of them (especially my friend that took it upon herself to learn how to make cheese. CHEESE! How cool is that?!). I’m even impressed by my brother and his wife who have watched the whole Star Wars collection in chronological order. But it does me or my mental health any good to tell myself I should be doing the same. I’m not making cheese, but I am starting my 5th book of quarantine. We’ve all done something. Remarkable or not, we are living our life the best we know-how in the midst of a pandemic. Social media may make us think we should be doing something different, but those shoulds are invalidating our own experience and puts unnecessary pressure and judgment on ourselves to be a certain way rather than be ourselves.
Fitspo and At-Home Fitness - Speaking of those shoulds, COVID19 has created a boom of at-home workouts. Whether that is your favorite yoga studio, that fitness account you follow on Instagram, or your aunt’s latest find on Pinterest, chances are high that your social media feeds are full of people sharing their latest workout. I’m all for moving our body all the time, and especially now, but not when it comes out of social media pressure, shoulds, and a desire to change our bodies. Move because it feels good, because it makes you happy, or because it gets out some of the pent up energy you are carrying around, not because it “makes it okay” to eat the made-from-scratch cinnamon rolls you made or because you want to “keep off the Quarantine 15.” Fun fact: Looking at Fitspo has a larger negative impact on our body image than looking at pictures of celebrities we “wish” we could look like. With celebrities, our brain can acknowledge that they have unlimited resources, personal chefs, and fancy home gyms. Most of us do not have those things, which makes it easier to not compare ourselves to them. But for the random fitness model that appears to be like us, our brain has a harder time recognizing differences from ourselves and is more likely to compare ourselves to them. Fitspo, with its “inspiring” messages, often encourages us to ignore what our body is saying to us, push through pain, and achieve our goals of looking like the model promoting it.
The Emotional Toll - No matter where your thoughts and opinions fall, chances are when you sign on to social media, somebody is spouting something that you don’t agree with or take offense to. Last week, an old friend of mine posted a shaming post about having no excuse to not exercise and eat healthy. It hit a chord that day, after seeing clients struggling with this exact thing, and I couldn’t hold my tongue. He and I went back and forth the rest of the afternoon. With each reply he posted, I could feel myself getting heated. My neck got blotchy from the stress and I dreaded reading his rebuttals to my arguments. The emotional labor was high for me. It’s important to recognize how those incidents feel in your body. For me, I would say it didn’t feel good. Engaging in those arguments increase my anxiety and make me feel crazy for starting it to begin with. I don’t like conflict and I know better than to think a heated interaction over Instagram is going to change anybody’s mind.
Physical toll - Increased screen time is also affecting our body physically. Heard of text-neck? My chiropractor explained this to me more technically than I can, but basically, it is neck pain caused by excessive time leaning forward and looking down on our phone. Pre-Covid, about 35% of the population were living with text-neck. With our increased cell phone usage for what may end up being a while longer, we may see that number jump. But it’s not just our neck, many of us are complaining of migraines, eye stress, and struggles to sleep. Increased screen time also means increased blue light exposure. Blue light mimics daytime light making it harder for our body to recognize when it is time to produce melatonin or go to sleep. Migraine and eye strain are just natural consequences of excessive screen time.
Here’s the thing. This list is far from exhaustive on the negative effects of social media and excessive screen time. And it isn’t all negative, but that’s for my next post.
Until then, start to notice how looking at social media and screen time increases make you feel, both emotionally and physically. What needs to be changed? What can stay?
Concerned about how isolation, FOMO, “shoulds” from social media are affecting your mental health? Wondering if counseling is right for you? If you would like more information or have questions about individual counseling, schedule a free 20 min consult here.
Embodied Self Counseling is located in Maplewood, MO. We work with clients struggling with eating disorders, body image, anxiety, gender identity, and life transitions in Maplewood and surrounding communities in the greater St. Louis area.