Mental health through social media

Who and what is controlling your thoughts?  How about your kids?
My son gets the news and information that shapes his world view from his Facebook account.  Given recent revelations about how Facebook and Google manage - censor - filter - cleanse - manipulate - news, information and opinions to suit their cultural bias, I consider this dangerous.

Social media use can be dangerous because information that goes out to, a or is filtered for, a vast portion of the population, especially younger people, is biased and does not tolerate differing points of view.  For all intents and purposes, Facebook and Google (and most likely other) corporate media giants whose owners and/or employees have strong political views are indoctrinating our youth, and adults to a lesser degree.  You receive a product for one purpose, for free, and in turn get heavy doses of biased political content for the favor.  Nothing is really free.

But what affect is this having on our society?  My son is convinced that whatever he reads on Facebook is the whole truth and is unwilling to be challenged by any other opinion or fact.  He knows what he knows; His belife's are (nearly) unshakable, especially within the last year of the all-out, hostile "Resist" movement.  Social media is a contributor to our cultural divide. Social media makes us stupid.

Dangerous too is the general unhappiness - the depression, anxiety and loneliness connected to use of social media.  (Read the Atlantic article below.)  No wonder our country is becoming emotionally fragile.  The group-think fostered by social media explains how young people split into identity groups.  They belong to larger packs rather than become more independent thinkers and doers.  Without the group, they don't even have much of an identity to cling to. Sadness, disconnection, anxiety, lack of confidence - these are not the traits of a healthy, adolescent or adult human being.  What are we being fed and where are we headed?  Can this be changed?

USC NOTE:  My personal bias is that social media is overrated and I do not have any social media accounts.  Even this blog and all the research I do takes up too much of my time.  I don't know how anyone does it.  Plus I hate being tied to a computer - there are too many other things I want to do with my life before I call it quits!

There is a great article on the Atlantic website,  "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?"   Researcher from UCSD takes an-in depth look at how a whole generation is being affected by a technology that is novel to all previous generations, and it's not pretty.

"More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis."

The subject of the Atlantic article has to do with adolescents' use of smartphones, however other  studies link the use of technology by adults to their mental state also.  This article,  "You asked: Is Social Media Making Me Miserable?" in Time magazine online speaks to these issues and gives a bit of history to those who don't remember a time without computers, much less mobile phones.

"Back in 1970, the technology writer Alvin Toffler published a book called Future Shock, which became an international bestseller. The book is about how humans struggle with too much technological change in too short a time—and it's all-too relevant today. Social media now dictates how people interact with friends, read the news and navigate their day-to-day existence.

One recent study examined the links between Facebook use and wellbeing. “We found that the more you use Facebook over time, the more likely you are to experience negative physical health, negative mental health and negative life satisfaction,” says study author Holly Shakya, assistant professor and social media researcher at the University of California, San Diego."