The Surprising Impact of Sharing Selfies on Mental Health

How many selfies have you taken in the last week? What about the last day? Did you know that with every snap of the camera, you could be putting yourself in harm’s way? That’s what a significant amount of research is telling us: social media use – and in particular, selfie-posting – has a negative effect on mental health.

If you’ve ever filtered and edited a photo until it was “just right” to post on social media, you could be an unwitting victim of this modern cultural phenomenon. While it’s convenient to be able to use our phones to take pictures anywhere and anytime, the problem is that taking images, manipulating them and then sharing them on social media has created a fixation on how we look to others. And because none of the manipulated images we post reflect true reality, people who view the images on social media then compare their own appearance to something that isn’t real – and that they can never achieve.

This downside of social media use has manifested in some troubling research. Consider these statistics:

• A 2014 national survey conducted by the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Research on Media, Technology and Health found that among nearly 1,800 young adults (age 19-32), use of multiple social media platforms (seven or more) tripled the risk of having depression and anxiety, compared with those who used only one or two.
• In 2017, the Royal Society for Public Health published a report which found that among almost 1,500 young people in the U.K. (age 14-24), the two most image-focused platforms, Instagram and Snapchat, ranked as the most detrimental to mental health and well-being.
• A newly released 2018 study led by researchers at York University worked with young women between the ages of 16 and 29. They found that taking and posting selfies on social media caused adverse psychological effects for the women, specifically impacting mood and body image.

Finding Balance With Social Media Use

Of course, these findings do not mean that posting on Snapchat or scrolling through your Instagram feed will cause you to become anxious and depressed. However, they do suggest that social media use may be driving feelings of inadequacy and anxiety in many young people.

Do you or a loved one struggle with feelings of depression, anxiety and poor body image? Do you feel social media use is contributing to these problems? Sound Mind Therapy offers individual counseling services by licensed professional counselors to help you see life from a different perspective! To make an appointment, call (314) 499-9144 or complete our online request form. From our office in Creve Coeur, we serve residents of St. Louis, St. Charles, Clayton and surrounding suburbs.