The Social Media Psychologist (long read)

I recently hit 10,000 followers on Instagram. It’s great to be reaching so many people with information about mental health, but it’s making me wonder whether as a psychologist I should be on social media at all…

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When Will I, Will I be Famous?

…this is where the comparison, which just taps away in the background, can start to become a bit dangerous. There are two sides to this- what we see and what we present. Even if you just lurk, seeing the heavily curated feeds of others’ lives can leave us feeling inadequate and anxious. How many times have you found yourself buying something just because you saw it on Instagram? Just like in magazines, social media can sell us the myth that we, too, can have this life if we were only to buy this product. And, if you don’t, and suddenly see that everyone else managed to get that Marks & Spencer dress then you can begin to feel inadequate and out of the loop.

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The virtual and the valuable

Generally speaking, we want to be in the ‘in-group’, because it will make us feel stronger and like we have a definite place in the world. The in-group protects its status, and the self esteem of those on the outside is damaged because it attacks their sense of belonging. That’s where cliques come from. That’s what happened due to the tagging element of the campaign- although the intention was to use tagging to spread the word about the campaign, it also created an ‘in-group’ - or rather many different in-groups - resulting in others understandably feeling excluded.

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