“Social media” sites like Facebook and Instagram are making people feel socially isolated because we fall into a trap of judging other people’s lives’ and it is becoming increasingly hard to not scroll through a highlight reel of other people’s lives and compare it to ours. Furthermore, with the scandal of Cambridge Analytica, Facebook Executives have now admitted that the platform may pose a risk to users’ emotional well-being, with people only feeling ‘validated’ in their life with they have enough ‘likes’ or ‘shares, making these sites addictive to users.

When you refresh your Instagram page, a rotating wheel appears, not for any reason other than your brain associates this symbol with ‘waiting’ and therefore Instagram knows you will stay on the app until it has refreshed. Small tweaks like this is what is causing people to habitually scroll mindlessly through social media for up to hours at a time, and the longer you’re on there, the more negative effects on your self-esteem and mental health.

Studies have shown that the human brain is juggling about 150 ‘distant friendships’ at a time on social media and 5 meaningful relationships in person. Humans cannot have more than 150 friends due to limitations of brain size, attention span, and the amount of time it takes to nurture close friendships, yet the average person has 338 ‘friends’ on Facebook. It’s no wonder our brains are getting confused and anxious with the sheer volume of posts we’re seeing on social media and amount of people we feel we need to keep up to date with.

In recent news, children and teens are having to wait up to 18 months to get an assessment and effective treatment for mental health issues that should’ve been noticed before it got to this point. The government has proposed that no child should wait more than 4 weeks for a mental health assessment in new plans to overhaul young people’s mental health care. However the plans will be “rolled out to only a fifth or a quarter of the country by 2022-2023” according to the Education Select Committee and the Health and Social Care Committee, which has been criticised as not being ambitious enough to make a serious impact on the amount of young people needing help with their mental health. With an alarming amount of young people on social network sites under the required age restriction of 13, these figures are worrying.

If social media is getting you down, here are some suggestions of how to reset your mind into a positive way of thinking:

• Get some fresh air. Whether it’s walking home after work, taking your dog out or meeting your friends for a group gym class, exercise is directly linked to how we feel inside and doing regular exercise is proven to combat problems such as depression and anxiety
• Eat a balanced diet. This leads on from the first point but eating healthily and putting fresh food in your body will in turn make your head feel clear and helps you to feel good about yourself.
• Limit yourself! If you can detect a direct link between social media and feeling down, limit yourself to an hour a day on your phone or social media scrolling only on weekends. You’ll realise that the more conversations you have in person without a screen in your hand will be more meaningful and have a positive effect on your mind.
• Don’t be afraid to talk about your mental health. Never think that talking about how you’re feeling is a sign of weakness; it’s a sign of strength and the more people that talk about it, the less stigma there will be.