How Social Media Impacts Mental Health?

Before discussing anything about social media, let’s have a look at some incredible stats:

• There are around 500 million active Instagram stories uploaded across the globe every day.
• Some of the active social media users include 90.4% of Millenials, 77.5% of Generation X, 48.2% of Baby Boomers.
• An average of three hours per day is spent by users on social media platforms and messaging.
• Nearly 73% of marketers state that social media marketing has proved to be either ‘somewhat effective’ or ‘very effectivehttps://www.simplilearn.com/digital-marketing/social-media-certification-training for their business.
• 54% of social browsing users utilize social media to research the required products.
• 71% of customers who had a good experience with the brand on social media are likely to suggest the brand to their family and friends.
• The most popular social media platform across the globe is Facebook.

Last but not least,

• There are nearly 3.5 billion social media users across the world.

Humans are social creatures and need the companionship of friends and relatives to progress in life. Social connection with other people can relieve stress, anxiety, and sadness. Also, having no or least social connectivity may lead to mental health problems.

Today, social media has become an essential part of our routine lives. Many of us spend most of our time on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and other popular platforms. Social media has numerous enjoyable and positive benefits.

For many businesses, social media has worked wonders by paving a way to send a brand’s messages to the right people at the right time and hope that your brand is attracting more and more potential customers.

Benefits of Social Media

1. Easier, faster communication

The line of communication, which was once a challenge, has become easier and faster than ever before. It is faster than ever to contact the right people without even picking up a phone because people spend more time on social media to keep in touch with their brands.

Customers can give their real feedback in real-time, which helps businesses to improve in revolutionary ways.

2. Improve organic visibility

Social media can unlock potential value to your brand. When following SEO strategies by linking quality backlinks to your brand’s website, social media also provides relevancy signals and other appropriate signals to search engine giants like Google to make sure that popular content is shareable and easily visible.

3. Customer Feedback

When your Facebook friends leave feedback, or you figure out that they like a brand, it drives you to that brand. Isn’t it?

The same thing goes with YouTube, Instagram, and other websites. Customer feedback has such a strong impact on our minds.

4. User-generated content and crowdsourcing of ideas

The user-generated content is free, unique, and simply awesome. When you have a large audience, you get potential content that really impacts a brand and its messages.

While there are many positive aspects of social media, it is not a replacement for real-life friends and connectivity. To stay happy, healthy, and positive requires in-person contact to activate the hormones that relieve stress and anxiety.

Some positive aspects of Social Media

Today when covid-19 pandemic has brought the world to a big halt, thanks to social media that enables us to stay connected with our friends and relatives from every corner of the world.

When we think about social media and mental health, we notice that social media doesn’t have the psychological effect in the way in-person contact does, it still enables you to stay connected and has positive effects on your mental well-being.

Let us look at some of the positive aspects of social media on our mental health:

• Social media enables you to keep updated with family and friends across the globe.
• It lets you network with other people having similar goals and interests, and also find new friends or communities.
• It lets you identify sources of valuable information or learning
• It gives you a platform for sharing your creativity and self-expression
• You can join or promote good causes, join groups that work for social welfare, raise awareness regarding serious issues.
• You can seek emotional support when you go through tough times.
• You can promote your startup or business and can bring drastic differences to your venture.
• It impacts your mental health in the sense that when you share a piece of art or information, the reviews or likes you get make you feel appreciated. However, some people are always there to demotivate you.
• Social media is an excellent platform for marketing your products or services.
• There are many motivational speakers over social media platforms that have a huge impact on our mental health. Some of us are so used to their podcasts that they really bring a difference to our mental state.

There are numerous positive effects of social media on our mental health. But there are some negative aspects to be considered as well. The most popular is FOMO or Fear of Missing Out, which is mostly observed among youth. The other negative impacts include cyberbullying, isolation, depression and anxiety, inadequacy about appearance, self-absorption, etc.

Wrap Up

Today, smartphones have made social media accessible everywhere. This has improved the business’s strategies as it enables them to engage customers potentially. Like everything has positive and negative aspects, if you concentrate on positive aspects, you can leverage social media to enhance your business, advertise your products or services, or simply stay happy by staying connected with your dear ones.

When you search Google for the benefits of social media, you can find social media marketing, an excellent approach to digital marketing of anything you do or possess. It may be a small, local business/store, your online services, your artful products, or just your expressions or views on simply anything.

You may have noticed that business titans also leverage social media for marketing their products and services.

Mental health is defined as a state of well-being that enables people to understand their abilities, work well, and solve everyday issues. Social media does affect the ways we live our lives. Our lifestyle differs from the one we had a decade ago, and the credit goes to the powerful social media.