Is scrolling through Facebook or Instagram making you more, or less, happy?
I am on the hunt for more happiness, to which end, I am reading The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and psychiatrist Howard Cutler, and it came as no surprise to find that, a few pages in, there’s a subheading called, ‘the comparing mind’, which expands on the premise that our levels of satisfaction are strongly influenced by our tendency to compare.
A few weeks prior, I’d already come to this realisation and deleted my Instagram account after 18 months.
Since 2010, when smartphones became popular, children’s mental health started declining.
Because while social media content can inspire joy and compassion, it can also breed discontent – and sadly, a whole lot worse.
Since social media came along, we are constantly bombarded with the updates – often the highlights – of people’s lives.
Feeling rubbish when seeing your friends’ posts about their love lives/work successes/latest holidays, etc etc, does not mean you’re not happy for them! It’s most likely that, if things aren’t going the way you’d hoped in your own life, these daily reminders are serving to compound your discontent.
Social media is making comparing much more of a factor in our happiness, because other people’s lives are constantly paraded in front of us via the virtual world.
But, even though we are often confronted with a warped non-reality on social media, and know as much, the brains behind Facebook and Instagram have made sure we keep coming back for more and keep scrolling, for fear of missing out (so prevalent, the expression has its own acronym, FOMO), playing on human weaknesses, like the desire to belong and be liked, luring us into a false sense of security; the amount of likes we get a measure of our success, our attractiveness, our child’s cuteness, our happiness.
NHS medical director Professor Stephen Powis recently called for celebrities and influencers to be more responsible when taking payment for promoting products like diet pills and appetite suppressors – potentially damaging to our physical and mental health – on social media, while calling for the social media sites to take such posts down.
This level of irresponsibility is sickening. But the call for celebrities and influencers to post responsibly should go way further. It’s hard to see how the shameless self-promotion rife on Instagram empowers, inspires, or brings joy to others.
Rather, such content appears to be promoting feelings of inadequacy, and not just among impressionable or vulnerable young people, as is often reported, but men and women of all ages who are experiencing increased levels of inferiority due to this rampant over-sharing craze.
And while, because of their reach, the so-called influencers and celebrities are at risk of causing the most damage through their socially irresponsible self-indulgence, it’s high time that we all were more discerning and thoughtful when posting.
So, how can we keep happy in an Instagram world?
Below are a few things I am working on in my pursuit of happiness:
1. Don’t compare your life to others. How?! Really, I’m not sure, but I think it’s all about perspective, recognising that we’re all on different paths, learning different lessons, for different reasons, and that overcoming problems, obstacles and hurdles make us stronger and more compassionate human beings.
2. Positive thinking and gratitude will help keep negative thinking at bay, making us more resilient social media users. One way of getting better at letting things wash over you is to practice positive thinking; every day find time to list five things you’re grateful for: the more attention you give to positive thoughts, the more natural it will become not to focus on the negative ones.
3. Recognise that things aren’t always what they seem and what you’re seeing, doesn’t necessarily depict reality.
4. Spend less time in the virtual world, and more in the real world.
Give yourself some respite, time to quieten your whirring mind.
Instead of scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, stare into space. Find inspiration through more nourishing pastimes like reading, talking, thinking, dreaming, doing, living.
Give your imagination the chance to ignite. Create your own reality, rather than be affected by someone else’s virtual reality.
I want to be more happy, and I want you to be too, because life is too short to be unhappy. And if you’re happy and I’m happy, we’ll make other people happy too.
The secret to happiness could lie in changing our perspectives – or deleting our Instagram accounts.