A study conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health last year took a look
at the effects of using social media on the mental health of 1,500 individuals
they discovered that out of the five most commonly used social media
platforms frequent usage in four of them Twitter Facebook snapchat and Instagram
caused mental health issues while only one YouTube had a somewhat positive
effect on mental health the four platforms that cause mental health
issues with then ranked from least damaging to most damaging and here are
the results Twitter being the least followed by
Facebook followed by snapchat and at the very bottom the social media platform
that messes with your head the most Instagram now this brings up the
question of well why why is Instagram the platform that causes the most mental
health problems and why is it that using social media platforms is ruining your
life and that's what we're gonna talk about in today's video see the thing is
our brain is constantly collecting data about our environment without us really
noticing it it does this for a variety of reasons such as making sure that
we're not in danger or to see if there aren't any resources nearby but one of
the most important reasons it does this is to check and see where we currently
stand in what's called the social hierarchy see within every social
situation within every environment that you find yourself in whether it be at
school at work or even at a nightclub there is a hierarchy a pyramid the
people at the top of this pyramid are the ones who have the most power the
ones who are the strongest the wealthiest the ones with the most
influence now our brain determines where people stand on this pyramid by
primarily looking at visual cues we look at someone's physique how muscular and
fit they are to determine physical strength we look at things that someone
owns like clothing cars and their lifestyle to determine someone's wealth
and we look at the types of people they surround themselves with to determine
their level of influence we look at all of these things to determine where the
people around us are on the pyramid but we also use this information to
determine where we are on the exact same pyramid now back in a day before the
invention of the internet before everyone started using social media
there weren't that many people to compare ourselves to where your brain
would simply look at the people that you spent the most time around and
make an estimation off of that for example when you were still in school
your brain mainly focused on the kids that attended your school now let's say
for the purposes of this video that you were a perfectly average kid back in
high school you had an average amount of friends you came from an average family
with an average income you were average looking as average as can be when your
brain compared you to the people in your surrounding it would probably look
something like this there were probably only a couple of kids were above you on
the pyramid the popular kids captains of sports teams members of student council
etc but to be honest there really weren't that many maybe only five to ten
percent of the school population at the same time they were probably also a
couple of kids who are below you on the pyramid kids who didn't have any friends
who had a hard time socializing these kids probably made up about another five
to ten percent of the school population the remaining 80% of the school
population were people who were pretty much average just like you just really
average kids from average families with really normal lives you know some might
have been slightly above and some slightly below you but most people were
pretty close to each other on the pyramid now back in the day when you
were in an environment like this you didn't feel like you were inferior to
the people around you sure there were a couple people who are better than you at
things who are above you on the pyramid but the vast majority of people were
essentially your equals at least that's how your brain saw it but fast forward
to modern times even if you're a seventeen year old kid in high school
surrounded by mostly average kids who are just like you your brain thinks that
you are competing against extremely successful people it believes that there
are extremely wealthy fit and popular people who are around your age all
around you and it believes this because of the amount of time you spend on
social media see the average American now spends on average two hours every
single day on social media however that's including adults and the elderly
a recent study actually found that the average teenager is spending around six
to nine hours on social media every single day and the thing is when you're
spending that many hours on social media your brain no longer sees your current
environment as it is it starts to believe that all of these people you see
on Instagram are people who are actually around you in real life and then it
starts to look at their lives and it compares it to your own it notices that
these people are so much better look then you mainly because of things like
lighting angles filters and Photoshop then your brain starts to believe that
there are all these people who are much more successful than you wealthier than
you it sees people your age driving fancy cars going on exotic vacations
wearing expensive clothes and then your brain starts to believe that there are
all of these people living happier lives than you hundreds and hundreds of
pictures smiling as if every single second of their lives were filled with
bliss by spending this much time on social media you trick your brain into
believing that you are no longer average that you are no longer somewhere in the
middle of the pyramid it starts to believe that you are actually in the
bottom 5% instead of having just a handful of people who are above you your
brain starts to believe that most people in the world are above you the bar is
raised almost impossibly high it seems like everyone is living close to perfect
lives and you're just here living an average one the more time you spend on
social media platforms like Instagram the lower and lower on the pyramid you
start to believe you are and that's where all of the mental health problems
stem from see the bottom of any social hierarchy is not a good place to be
this applies to humans and most other mammals if you're at the bottom of the
pyramid it means you are one of the least valuable people in the group it
means that nobody cares about you it means that you're expendable this
increases your levels of anxiety drastically it causes things like
insomnia panic attacks depression and addiction because you can't relax when
you're at the bottom it's like coming up second to last place on one of those
reality TV shows one more mistake and you're dead how can you relax and enjoy
life when you believe you're hanging off the cliff with just a couple of fingers
now of course this isn't real the truth is you're probably not at the bottom of
the social hierarchy most people around you live very average lives you're most
likely somewhere around the middle of the social hierarchy in your environment
where your brain doesn't know that because you're spending six hours every
single day in a fantasy world a world filled with models Lambos vacations and
endless smiles a world that literally no one can compete with even the most
successful people in the world can't compete no one is happy every single
second of their day as their pictures will like to have you believe and that's
why social media platforms like Instagram are ruining your life because
they force you into thinking you have to compete against a huge group of
imaginary people that you can never beat this episode was brought to you if the
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