Anxiety and social media: What not looking away is doing to our minds

Social media platforms have become the most prevalent and powerful influence on our personal development — and lack thereof, writes Dr Rosemary Sorensen.

THE POLICE SHOT and killed a man last week in a place called Daisy Hill, on the outskirts of Maryborough in Victoria. He had a gun, claimed to have explosives and fired at the police after an eight-hour standoff.

Then came the social media response. Good bloke, had health issues, didn’t deserve this. Or, police did what they could, horrible for them too. And lots of shades of grey in between.

One of the “community” social media accounts for this town is a frightening place, a snapshot of how quick people are to air an opinion, how angry they are, how ready to shout and abuse. When there is nothing as awful as a violent death to argue about, someone inevitably posts something bound to get a huge response, like a ban on gollywogs, or the installation of a public artwork, or whether Welcome to Country is a good thing.

One regular poster appears to spend a great deal of time in the local courts — as an observer. From these posts, we hear about people who are up on charges of malicious damage, violence, theft, drug trafficking. The tone of these posts is matter-of-fact, critical, but not provocative. Just doing a public service, seems to be the intent, letting people know what’s happening in the “community”.

On a Facebook account for another nearby place, a local man has been posting about a physical and online altercation with a young man recently out of gaol. “Hooning” in the deserted streets of the small town, this young man, convicted of paedophilia, sends messages threatening to bash people up. The story, playing out through posts of increasingly ghastly intensity, seems destined for a tragic ending.

Meanwhile, in another town not far from there, social media is full of wellness posts. People offering art experiences. Sound healing. Looking for a place to park their tiny house so they can get to work on bio-farming.

Meanwhile, too, appearing next up on your “feed”, that dog-rescue account that was so heart-warmingly watchable has become a bit tedious and the nice man who calls himself a dog-whisperer is starting to look slightly deranged, avid and, possibly, exploitative.

How are you coping? If you’re reading so-called community pages, is your pessimism on the rise? Or do you see it as an entertaining distraction, cheaper or at least quicker than streaming a movie about violent, drug-addicted paedophiles crashing cars and shooting people?

Social media surpasses 5 billion users

The latest data shows that almost two-thirds of the world's population is active on social media, a statistic that highlights new challenges.

Do you think, maybe, there’s something addictive about checking your phone repetitively and scrolling down through the snarling and derisory, or placating and conciliatory, comments as a post gains the much-desired momentum created by divisive content? Harmless? Or, dangerous when you start feeling that the community is a microcosm of a world in which human beings are doomed? That way madness lies.

In 2024, everyone who was reading (books, that is) was reading The Anxious Generation, by New York University (NYU) academic Jonathan Haidt. It was apparently Haidt’s book about how smartphones have increased mental ill-health in children that spurred the Labor Government’s legislation to prevent social media platforms from providing accounts to children under 16.

Haidt is, but of course, controversial, drawing criticism from researchers who say that those who criticise children’s internet usage have no proof that it’s harmful. Haidt provides statistics and graphs to try to prove the correlation between depression in children and smartphones.

While the experts debate whether a correlation proves causality, what we can say is that it would be foolish, bordering on calamitous, not to try to monitor and understand what happens to us, young and old, when social media use spirals — as, indeed, it’s designed to do.

Haidt quotes figures here in Australia that show there is a rise in young people’s admission to mental health facilities, which coincides with the increase of smartphone use: not proof, but certainly deserves attention.

It’s one thing to feel, as an adult, deeply unhappy and discouraged and hopeless because of people’s comments and interactions on your phone screen. It’s quite another, of an even more dangerous intensity, to subject children to such emotions and subsequent behaviours.

Haidt was going to write about 'the corrupting effects of social media on democracy' and probably still will, which is certainly a topic we need to be discussing.

As he researched that, however, he became aware that:

'Social media platforms are… the most efficient conformity engines ever invented.'

Aided by what Frank Furedi called “paranoid parenting” (in a book by that title published in 2001), social media becomes the most prevalent and powerful influence on personal development (or lack thereof).

In a chapter of The Anxious Generation about parenting and letting children take risks, Haidt quotes Furedi:

'When adults step away and stop helping each other to raise children, parents find themselves on their own. Parenting becomes harder, more fear-ridden and more time-consuming, especially for women.'

Add to that pressure the latest disquiet and media-urged public panic about childcare risks, which are being amplified by those who want women to stay at home, and parenting becomes even more fear-ridden.

Seeing what gets posted on Facebook community sites and scrolling through the comments probably saps joy, energy and hope from your day; for those of us who had pre-screen-based childhoods, we mostly cope. Yes, you use your phone for these kinds of addictively negative experiences, but you also read, say, an article in an online news outlet, or even a book! And you also will get on with the rest of your life, take a walk, dig the garden, visit an art gallery. You manage not to let it get out of control.

Here’s the thing: for those who are growing up since smartphones and addictive social media sites, while they too get to see what Haidt calls “many interesting experiences”, the research he quotes signals something really disturbing:

'They [social media sites calibrated to increase usage] reduce interest in all non-screen-based forms of experience.'

In other words, they limit desire for experience that is physically social, that requires more than just your thumbs and eyes, that takes place in real time, not disembodied screentime. And that, according to Haidt, hurts the mind.

The existential dangers of social media

There has been an enormous amount of discussion on the damage that social media is causing on a global scale.

Before smartphones and the hooks of social media, many readers couldn’t wait for each new publication by British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips, whose pithy books, such as On Kindness, On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored and Unforbidden Pleasures are posh self-help, explaining behaviours in entertaining but erudite ways.

In 2005, he wrote Going Sane, which posited sanity as a balancing act, between chaos, rebellion and irrationality on the one hand (which are part of experience) and, on the other hand, the hard but satisfyingly valuable lessons to be learned from living a kind life — towards oneself and others.

Here’s how he finishes that book:

'The sane believe that confusion, acknowledged, is a virtue; and that humiliating another person is the worst thing we ever do. Sanity should not be our word for the alternatives to madness; it should refer to whatever resources we have to prevent humiliation.'

Now apply that to Facebook and TikTok, to the way not just adults but vulnerable children are exposed to methodologies of humiliation never before available to humankind.

While I get what Adam Phillips is saying about not falling back on the accepted definitions of sanity as a simple (but regimented) opposite of madness, shrugging our shoulders and letting the experiment with our minds just rip along without demanding responsibility from the mega-companies who own social media sites is, surely, a pretty good definition of insane.

Here are two quotes Haidt includes in The Anxious Generation:

'If your body was turned over to just anyone, you would doubtless take exception. Why aren’t you ashamed that you have made your mind vulnerable to anyone who happens to criticize you, so that it automatically becomes confused and upset?'

And:

'Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people — unless it affects the common good. It will keep you from doing anything useful.'

The first is Epictetus, 1st Century CE. The second, Marcus Aurelius, 2nd Century CE.