We are More Lonely than Ever. Find out Why and How to Counter It.

We are more connected and more lonely than ever. And this seems to be true across sex, age, race, and income. The COVID-19 pandemic has played a significant role in fostering disconnection among individuals, leading many of us to be less inclined to re-engage socially at the same level as before. Loneliness doesn’t typically travel…

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American Psychological Association Publishes Guidelines on Social Media Use for Children and Adolescents

Social media, like any technology, is neither inherently good nor bad. Its value lies in how we choose to use it. To encourage the positive use of social media and discourage harmful practices among children and adolescents, the American Psychological Association (APA), an organization with 146,000 members, has published a series of recommendations and advisories…

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Media Literacy and Modern Technology

Media Psychology Technology, including social and other forms of media, is often considered neutral – its value is determined by how we use it (see Social Media is Related to Both Ill-Being and Well-Being). Finding a social group online that understands you can be a positive, life-changing, and even life-saving experience. However, becoming consumed with…

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Doomscrolling: The Ultimate Negative Flow State and Four Ways to Counter It

First, A Little Psychology I’ve written before about social media use and how it can be both helpful and harmful. The article, Is Social Media Reflecting Our Pathology or Adding to It?, concluded that social media does both. The trick to making social media a positive experience is understanding how their algorithms work. The first…

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Social Media Use is Related to Both Ill-Being and Well-Being

Social media use and mental health seems to have a love/hate relationship.  Brailovskaia and Margraf (2016) conducted a large study comparing users and non-users of Facebook on various mental health variables. While they found that users were significantly more likely to score higher on scales of narcissism, they also scored higher on extroversion and self-esteem.…

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Social Media and Self-Esteem

A recent article published in Science Direct looked at the association between social media use and mental health among adolescents. The impact of social media on mental health is certainly not a new topic. Neil Petersen wrote about envy as a mediator of mental illness among social network users, how social media affects life satisfaction…

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Envy Might Drive Some of Social Media’s Mental Health Effects

Social media has facilitated both new ways of connecting with others and new ways of tallying how our lives stack up against theirs. In the twenty-first century, keeping up with the Joneses has become keeping up with the hundreds of people on your Facebook feed. Several previous studies have suggested that comparing yourself with others…

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The Tweets That Go With a Quarter-Life Crisis

From getting married to buying homes, millennials are accused of doing everything later. But that’s not true when it comes to having life crises. As the rise of the term “quarter-life” crisis suggests, having life crises is something millennials seem willing to do early and often. So what do you do when you want to…

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