Subconsciously Trapped: Is Instagram Ruining People's Mental Health?
By Noyonika Sircar
As infectious as it has become, Instagram syndrome has infected the life of every teenager. Ever since its launch in 2010, Instagram has surged the charts, causing a wave of comparisons amidst teenagers, pervasively upgrading to detrimental trolls and toxic content shadowing the unattainable standards, eclipsing the true self. Instagram might have topped the charts for being the best bet for business, however, the perils of mental impact has been less discussed.
Mental health has taken a toss after the pandemic commenced. The way our personal space has been traded with work, the vagaries has been surmounting, solely. The only way in which people all over the world have been connected is through social media, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok challenges and Zoom. These have unfortunately gained an obscene amount of space in our current life, leaving little room of question to ponder, what will our life look like without this digital ecosystem ?
Instagram’s most dangerous aspect will certainly be to reinvent the feeling of self worth. Instagram has been a mirror, to the most shallow aspects of the normal things of functioning. The constant self absorption is a colossal reflection of Instagram taking charge of things in your life, over the actual reflection of things around, since Instagram has charted out your ways of conducting self. Tampering self esteem and confidence, this paints a poor body image garnered with validation from a world of strangers who have an access to your personal life. This leads to major mental wreck.
The consistent reinforcing nature of Instagram is also one of the massive recurring results of Instagram addiction. The outcome is unpredictable, this causes a likely repetition of behaviour. The desire of feeling ‘liked’ on social media is a clout, always tapped on, to qualify the presence. Instagram definitely increases our dopamine and configures us to the world of vanity and social acceptance, but it also ties us to the threads of negative exacerbation of digital vulnerability, almost apocalyptic to mental health — once stained cannot be undone.
FOMO- is also crucial to the urge to get back to social media. The feeling of feeling left out takes over your anxiety, leading to endless moments of questioning for being left out for any social activity.
The insidious nature of Instagram will always make us question, reframing our social network. The digitally dystopian world has made us believe in a new set of behavioral codes. It started as a modest picture sharing app, to a potential home for cyber bullying and deprivation of mental health. This has also caused a pressing need to communicate, to create, and maintain social media reputations and connections. Navigating between different threads of social media only increases the risk of being susceptible to more and more social media gaze. The identity constructed in social media remains consequential than the rest, often arching over your real life personality.
The primary solution for the neglected mental health seems quitting all social media applications, however, it will be ideal to set a discipline. Taking short breaks from Instagram will help with giving a direction to social media time span. Timing your app is a good way to combat the everyday idleness to check up on social media. Feeling confident in your own skin and filtering validation will be a choice for yours to make. The less impossible, fixable ways of using social media and not staying under the grip of it would be to stray away from the fancies and rewiring a life with natural levels of dopamine. The digital system cannot be reversed. The core objective will be to look beyond the false facade of social media and live in the real world.