Our guest speaker Dr. Rizwana Nulwala took a much-needed session on Social media and insecurity on August 16, 2023. It was an eagerly awaited session as many members were facing this modern challenge that’s become a part of our life.
Social media has revolutionised our lives in the past couple of decades. We are able to connect with long lost friends from all over the world via instant messages and video calling, entertain ourselves, speak our minds to a wider audience, connect with people and make new friends, connect to our favourite celebrities, view videos of places across the world that we cannot visit ourselves, find dates and so much more. But like any other technology it has its dark sides when the algorithms used on such apps exploit human nature to give us unhealthy dopamine kicks and get us addicted to such apps.
Dr Rizwana Nulwala is a psychotherapist based in Mumbai with a rich experience of 24 years. She has done extensive work with people needing de-addiction and those with substance abuse. Her doctoral thesis dealt with children of parents with substance abuse (alcohol/drugs). Her findings reveal that many a times such children choose not to drink ever but they are prone to other addictions such as smoking, weed, exercise addiction or work addiction. There is a genetic link that causes such children to veer towards some other form of addiction. Social media is also one such kind of addiction that has recently developed in the past few years, but particularly more after the Covid pandemic as we became isolated.
In 2018, a research was published by Melissa Hunt where she studied young university students and she discovered a causal link between social media usage and depression. She found that people with restricted use of social media turned out to be happier after 3 weeks of being away from social media. The research says that simply decreasing the social media usage time by 10 minutes per day led to significantly increased mental well being.
Our phones have become like an extension of our hands in the sense that we reach out for our phone whenever we feel like, causing loss of focus in our work. It is also leading to our relationships suffering as one or both of the partners are engrossed in their phones. Consequently, this results in lack of communication and bonding.
We get attracted to social media because when we get likes, shares and positive comments on our posts, it causes dopamine release in the brain that causes a rush of emotion similar to what happens during substance abuse. Our bodies do not naturally produce dopamine after a while so our mind craves for this dopamine rush. It causes an illusion of happiness that is addictive.
We also use filters, effects, air brushing, face morphing features, etc to create an illusion of being better than what we really are and it boosts our self esteem. We usually only show what we want to on social media to create a positive image of ourselves and to feel appreciated by others. So it is a carefully filtered view of us that we put out there to create an illusion of leading a happy life all the time. The struggles we face may not find a place in what we upload. Suppose we have to reach office and we get stuck in traffic, get wet in a downpour and our clothes and hair get messed up by the time we reach office. These are the things we may not usually show on social media.
As per a study, 135 minutes is the time what an average person spends on social media per day but the figure may actually be much higher as the time may be vastly under reported.
Umang also brought to focus usage of dating apps like Grindr, which have additional issues like lack of safety and cyber bullying, blackmail, etc. Despite these dangers, we access such apps which highlights our loneliness and sense of isolation.
Dr Rizwana feels that boundary setting has become tougher because of social media because the lives of everyone we know are always in our face on such apps and even on Whatsapp. But there are ways to handle this: by remembering our boundaries, keeping our phones on silent or responding to calls and messages only at a particular pre-decided scheduled time. This can help to structure our day instead of getting constantly interrupted or flooded with calls and messages, getting overwhelmed about it and then losing focus on work.
Whatsapp can also be a form of over communication. Dr Rizwana has tried a digital detox where she has quit many family Whatsapp groups because she felt forced to constantly greet good morning or be informed about some religious event being arranged weekly or a random party. If one doesn’t comment or like such messages, they are not considered a part of that group. She feels that these posts in a way increase the sense of loneliness because sometimes we see pictures of an event or party that some distant relative threw and you were not invited to it and she prefers to not know about it. So those boundary settings have become harder unless we do it ourselves and that is self love. She feels that if one is secure then that person does not need social media to make them feel good about their life.
At the core of our attraction to social media is that it affects our self esteem. For example, thoughts like “I am good enough if I can have a holiday at this exotic place”, or “I have to eat and post at this new restaurant”, or “I need to have this type of a branded designer outfit”. So we do not feel good about who we are, as it is. We are looking to get those likes and comments and validation to make us feel good about ourselves. Instead of being anchored within ourselves, we are depending on how others react to our posts to feel good about ourselves.
It can also cause problems in relationships when we see our friends posting from exotic locations and we complain to our partner that we never go on such vacations or to such places, something that would not have happened had we not been exposed to such posts. We may not even realise that the people who originally posted such pictures may have even broken up after that vacation because we do not know their complete stories and only the happy moments that they had shared on social media.
We do our financial audit when we file our tax returns. But sometimes we also need to do a life audit to decide what are the things we want in life and within that how much of social media use should we allow ourselves. High usage of such apps causes isolation. After seeing your friend’s posts about a vacation or a party, you may start thinking that your life is not like that and you would not feel nice about this fact. But we need to remember that we do not need to compare our ‘insides’ to someone’s ‘outsides’.
Dr Rizwana herself uses social media in a limited manner for her work alone. She does not feel the need to remain connected to her friends on social media. She says if there is something actually important in the lives of her friends, they will tell her themselves instead of her finding out random stuff about them on social media like what they ate last evening or what dress they wore or place they visited. She figured who the really important people are in her life and realised that she anyways keeps in contact with them regularly and does not need social media to remain connected with some random school or college friend or acquaintance she may meet once in a few years. She believes that by forcing ourselves out of social media or by restricting our time there we are forced to do other fulfilling things that we otherwise would have done anyways if there had been no social media, such as playing sports or meeting people face to face.
Here are some highlights from the Q&A session that Dr. Rizwana conducted:
Q. How do I get the will power to stop myself from checking my post to see how many likes or comments it got?
Rather than will power, it is a question about access to your life. What you need to remember before you post something is how many people need to know about the part of your personal life you are putting out there. In our house we have a bell, walls and a door, so no one can just enter it any time they feel like but in social media there is limited safety. If you have 2000 followers for example, you are allowing all of them to enter your life by posting about a moment that you are experiencing that causes you the urge to share. Would you do the same by allowing anyone to enter your house the same way you are allowing people to have access to your life? That is what we need to ask ourselves.
Suppose you have been in 2 relationships in the past and both didn’t work out. But you had posted a lot about those relationships on your social media account. Do you want random followers of your social media account to walk up to you and ask about what happened and why you broke up with someone? We need to remember that the more we post, the more we are becoming vulnerable to the outside world.
Q. How do I know if I am balancing my time on social media?
Listen to feedback from the people you live with because others observe us more than we observe ourselves. If you frequently receive comments from them like “you are always on your phone”, ‘I don’t get to talk to you nowadays”, “I can’t get your attention”, “We are not connecting anymore”, then it is time to reflect on your social media usage or device usage in general.
Q. How do I increase my attention span, focus on studies and avoid being on social media for long?
When cable TV came to India, studies show that our attention span reduced from 20 minutes to 15 minutes. Now with reels on social media, there is a concern that our attention span may be further shrinking to match the reel duration of a minute. To increase focus and attention spans, you have to be disciplined and to be a little hard on yourself. Discipline is a form of self love. The same technique won’t work for everyone but some general ways are to set timers for social media apps, or uninstall them for weekdays and install only on weekends, or uninstall for few weeks to be away from them, or get off them forever, inform people to simply message you instead, meditation, yoga or practice mindfulness to be in the here and now.
It was an eye-opening session for an activity that most of us do several times a day without thinking while accessing our social media apps. A take home thought that bears mentioning is that when we are addicted to anything, be it social media or anything else, it is a mental illness. We need to go for therapy if we are unable to get over it. Only will power or motivation may not be enough to get rid of any addiction. It may be that deep down we may need healing from some past trauma and to overcome that we may be indulging in some form of addiction to keep getting temporary dopamine boosts to have the illusion of feeling good. That is certainly something to reflect and introspect on before your finger reaches out to tap Instagram now.
– Written by Amit Rai
– Edited and uploaded by Mahrukh
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