Training
Hello! My name is Megan Anderson- I am a school counselor with a passion for helping students understand what happens when we let social media takes over our emotions and how social media can affect our brains. I created this presentation for students as an awareness to help their learning and to give you the tools to better regulate emotions which will hopefully help you within your everyday life.
Starting off, I’d like you to take a short survey on social media use. If you have your phone to take it, great! If not, there are paper copies available. I’d like you to be as honest as possible while taking this survey and know this isn’t a survey anyone is passing judgement on, it is just to get an idea of how the students here respond to social media use.
Technology Use- Technology is an incredible and ever-changing form of learning. Without technology, we would not have gotten to finish up the 19-20 school year and without social media, we would not have been able to stay connected to family and friends during the lockdown. Technology is incredible! But a good way to think about technology, internet, and social media is that those things are like a knife- a knife is very helpful when used properly and in a safe way but a knife can also cut you if it is used unsafely.
These are some terms before we jump into the presentation. The first term is internet addiction. Internet addiction is a pattern of time-consuming internet use which leads to distress. The next term is problematic social networking sites use. The symptoms of this results in excessive SNS use that are characterized by addictive tendencies. Next, is a term I am sure you have heard of before, FoMO or Fear of Missing Out. It is associated with a decrease in emotional well-being. Last, Smartphone addiction. It is a form of technology addiction, similar to Internet addiction.
My goals for this presentation are for you to take away these three key pieces- how social media affects our mental health and emotional regulation. I hope you will learn about social media addiction is and what the symptoms can include. By the end of this, I hope you take away at least one tip on how to be more mindful of how you use social media in your daily life, and this last one is a big one- this is not a presentation on how or why you should quit social media. That is not at all what I want this presentation to be. Social media is not going away, just like math isn’t going away but what we can do is practice skills to better manage the effects of social media.
In a previous slide, we reviewed some important terms to know but I left this one out to be a slide of its own. I want to let you know that there is such a thing called social media addiction. What is social media addiction? There are many definitions and many different terms for SMA. From my research, the best definition I could come up with by combining many is SMA is considered a type of internet addiction. Individuals who spend too much time on social media and that have a desire to be notified of anything immediately. It leads to significant impairment or distress. Other terms for Social Media Addiction can include internet addiction, smartphone addiction, or technology addiction.
SMA has been found to be associated with depressive symptoms, anxiety, low self-esteem, general psychological distress, tension, failure to control usage, feeling lost without a phone. Along with SMA, has anyone heard of the term- Fear of Missing Out or FoMO? FoMO is related to SMA in the sense that FoMO as a specific need and a predisposing characteristic of addiction in adolescents, which activates a state of distress when the adolescent assesses the situation as unacceptable for his/her own needs. Social Media heightens the state of FoMO. Evidence seems to indicate that adolescents with high levels of FoMO tend to use social media more in order to compensate for these psychological needs. Along with that, more evidence suggest that FoMO may ultimately have an impact on the well-being of individuals, increasing negative affect and emotional symptoms. The increase in emotional symptoms are caused from the heightened feeling that they do not belong and that they are missing out on important shared experiences.
When adolescents fail to implement positive strategies to help regulate their emotions, increased rates of peer rejection, aggression, antisocial behavior, cyberbully or bullying and social media stress can occur. These are three coping skills that can help combat social media stress. The first one is concealing- which means suppressing emotions or pushing away certain feelings. The next skill is adjusting or re-adjusting. An easy example for adjusting is being able to cheer yourself up after a bad experience. The third one is tolerating which means being non-defensive or telling yourself it is okay to feel whatever feeling you have. These are all skills we use throughout our day, but sometimes putting a name to them can help us realize what we are doing is beneficial to our mental health.
I want to show you this video from NetSmartz.org called Split Decisions. It is about two different reactions to social media and how they end of affecting this girl’s life.
*Watch Video Ask the question to the audience- What were some major differences between the two reactions? She impulsively posted many negative things vs calling her friend or boyfriend, saying her frustrations but listening to what the other person had to say and not posting a comment. Next, she saw a photo that she didn’t like- how did she handle that situation in different ways? Right, she asked the other girl nicely to take it down because she didn’t like how she looked vs coming at the girl out of anger and approaching the situation harshly. What was the last thing you noticed after looking at the two reactions? Did you see any of the three skills used, concealing, adjusting, or tolerating? How did that work out for that student?
At the beginning of this presentation, I said I wanted to give you skills to use to help in your everyday life. We talked about concealing, adjusting, and tolerating but here are three skills that can be utilized throughout our day and whenever you are on social media. When you are scrolling through social media, I want you to recognize if you are scrolling for fun or scrolling to avoid something. Research states that a majority of scrolling is to avoid something, such as a certain feeling or a task like homework or household chores. Next is audit your social media diet. I use the would diet because diet is mostly associated with cutting a food item out of your eating like sugar or pop or candy, but with social media, looking through who you follow or what type of content you look at, is there anything you should cut out to create a better online experience for yourself. The last one, is model good behavior on social media. I’ve heard the phrases “would you say that to them in person” when it comes to posting a rude comment on someone’s post. If you wouldn’t say that in person, then it shouldn’t be said online. Modeling good behavior will help you continue having a positive social media experience and lessen social media stress. This takes time and practice!
I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to my presentation and participating in answering some questions! If you would fill out my post-test either on your phone or with the paper version, that would be helpful for me to know how I can improve and do better for next time! Are there any questions or comments that I can answer for you?
