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Why Facebook is Toxic for Your Mental Health

Impact of Facebook on mental health

By Matthew AngeloPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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Why Facebook is Toxic for Your Mental Health
Photo by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash

Facebook is an unavoidable part of modern life. It's a place where people share their feelings, opinions, and everything in between with the world. Unfortunately, it is a toxic place for your mental health. Facebook has been found to lead to a decrease in self-esteem and self-confidence and feed into anxiety and depression.

Over the last ten years, social media has become an integral part of our everyday lives. With the rise in popularity of these platforms, discussions about mental health have emerged. Some studies show that Facebook can be toxic to your mental health. One study found that women who spend 10 minutes scrolling through Facebook each day are more than likely to feel depressed. This is more than those who spend 10 minutes on other activities like talking with their friends or playing games.

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Why Facebook is toxic for your mental health

According to a new study, Facebook can negatively impact one's mental health. Researchers found that people who do feel more connected with their Facebook friends had fewer symptoms of depression and loneliness. On the other hand, those who feel less connected to their friends on the social media platform were more likely to report having symptoms of depression and loneliness. This is because Facebook often reaffirms negative feelings such as boredom or anxiety. Many things can make Facebook harmful to one's mental health. First, the act of scrolling through one's feed can become an extremely time-consuming habit. Second, the platform creates false friendships. People tend to connect with their Facebook friends based on superficial traits. It can lead to negative relationships, which only make it worse.

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Criticism on Facebook: Why you shouldn't use Facebook

Facebook is the most popular social media sites in recent years, with over 2 billion monthly users. But with its growing popularity comes criticism. Critics question whether Facebook is toxic to your mental health and arguments for why you should not use Facebook. One view is that people only post the best parts of their lives on Facebook, leading to jealousy or feeling inadequate when comparing oneself to others. There's also fact checks, false information, and Facebook's algorithm looks for thing to increase your anger.

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Strategies to use Facebook in a healthy way

Social Media has weaseled its way into our lives and has taken over as the go-to place for communication. But with 10 hours of usage per day, Facebook can become toxic for your mental health. With social media becoming such a time suck, it is more challenging to make meaningful relationships. This can also include hobbies, work, family responsibilities, and anything else you enjoy.

• Be supportive in any online communities you belong in.

• Keep yourself in the present. Live in the moment.

• Ensure you follow others or things that make you happy.

• Prioritize real life over social media.

• Take a break.

There are more ways to use Facebook or other social media more healthily. These will help get you started.

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Avoiding Facebook

The one thing we considered as being a harmless pastime of connecting with friends and family, sharing pictures and videos with just a click of a button, has turned out to be an unhealthy addiction. In fact, Facebook only makes the United States population more disconnected from each other. This is why social media can actually affect your mental health and how it has become toxic for society.

Facebook has been linked to mental health problems due to the incessant stream of negative information. The world is overwhelmingly positive, with only 15% of posts on Facebook containing negative messages.

But when they are on Facebook, people's brains are wired to see the bad in everything. People who check their news feed at least twice a day have more symptoms of depression and loneliness than those who don't click on their feed.

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Thanks for reading my article. I hope you find many exciting ways to use your camera and become the envy of all your friends and family. Feel free to give this article a heart and share. Please subscribe to my vocal.media page and check out my other articles. A tip that helps keep me caffeinated is to write lots more for everyone. Join my official author newsletter if you prefer more creative work like urban fantasy or science fiction. Subscribe to my Kofi account for individual posts and stories.

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About the Creator

Matthew Angelo

I am a traditional and self-published author and content/copywriter. I write in many genres like fantasy, urban fantasy, horror, cyberpunk, grimdark, romance and science fiction.

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