Florence Plant, a second-year undergraduate at the University of Sheffield, tells her story.
07 March 2024
Psychology really can change your life. I discovered this recently, after a social psychology lecture filled me with the seemingly sudden urge to delete my social media.
The decision to do this at the age of 21 was more difficult than I’d like to admit. I belong to a generation that has grown up online, and I have been using social media platforms avidly from the age of 13. It has only been in the last few months that I have finally deleted some of the apps that had previously encompassed the majority of my free time, such as Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook and Twitter.
It was a lecture on ‘The Dark Triad’ (Paulhus & Williams, 2002) that did it. Our lecturer detailed the myth of Narcissus: the cold-hearted young man who was lured to the water to see himself, and subsequently wasted away due to his captivation with his own reflection. This myth was shocking to me: Narcissus’s youth made his decay appear all the more tragic and oxymoronic.
We went on to learn about the recent rise in narcissistic behaviour in young people, through studies such as Jean Twenge and colleagues’ (2008) meta-analysis. Their review of 85 studies found a 30 per cent increase in narcissism amongst college students from 1982 to 2006. Further studies have suggested a link between this increase and social media usage. For example, Reed et al. (2018) found a positive correlation between levels of narcissism and frequent usage of visual social media in 74 young participants.
These studies affected me. I saw a parallel between the narcissistic behaviour of young people and the youthful Narcissus’ wasted life. This social media-induced narcissistic increase was found to be particularly prevalent in young women. Another study by Twenge et al (2018), found a heightened prevalence of low mood and depressive symptoms in these subjects. Although re-analysis of Twenge’s studies by UK psychologist Amy Orben and colleagues have disputed Twenge’s claims, I related to the findings. I was a young woman enticed by the narcissistic influence of social media, in turn only amplifying other low mood symptoms of my teenage years.
Through my lectures, I was layering a research lens over my real-life experience of the allure of social media while growing up. It has only been since learning about these correlations that I have been able to understand how much social media contributed to some of my own personal struggles with self-image, and to gain some insights into how my own social media use was part of a more general psychological phenomenon.
Growing up with social media
Various studies have found visual media to play a particularly prominent role in juvenile attitude formation (Goldberg & Gorn, 1974), and this became apparent during my secondary school career. Social media dominated my own interests and those of my peers. Visual social media really shaped our choices regarding a range of subjects, such as fashion trends, hobbies and overall desirable behaviours. It seemed a fun and creative form of escapism to explore and discover our interests and emerging identities.
However, like most teenagers, I was subject to the moderators for high social modelling, as detailed by Robinson et al., (2011), such as low self-esteem and high empathy. These moderators meant that social media often had an exhausting impact, as some of these social norms seemed unattainable to me, especially at such a young age. This caused a range of negative self-attributions through the use of upwards comparisons (Wheeler, 1966), seeking out larger presences on social media that upheld unrealistic standards.
All these presences were a fertile breeding ground for early narcissistic attitudes, magnifying my low self-esteem and fuelling a need to prove my self-worth through my appearance. It is not surprising to me that girls as young as nine exposed to media influence indicate a desire to change their bodies (Schur et al., 2000).
Social media exacerbated more general problems that I was having at school. As a teenager, I inevitably had altercations with my friends and schoolmates, and social media meant that these problems always followed me home. The removed responsibility and audience inhibition (Latané & Darley, 1968) that comes with online platforms often meant that the things that were said exceeded the social or moral limits on what people felt able to say in person. This led to me spending hours and hours obsessing over messages online, wasting away my evenings in my bedroom; an image that to me is now strikingly analogous to that of Narcissus rotting away by the pool.
Social media was not an entirely negative experience, otherwise it wouldn’t have taken me until the age of 21 to delete these apps. Social media use is ubiquitous, with at least one platform used by 97 per cent of teenagers in the 2000s (Plackett, 2023). Social media was fun and addictive; it helped establish a solid group membership at school. I worried that I might lose my membership of the groups that I was in (Laursen et al., 2021) if I wasn’t on there.
However, I now view my attachment to social media in the same way that I view Narcissus’ attachment to his own image; while I knew it wasn't good for me, I just couldn’t tear myself away.
Using social media while starting university
Starting university was something of a whirlwind experience, and that journey without social media would have been incredibly difficult. Having the support of my best friends only a message away kept me sane. In order to maintain contact with the first new friends that I had somehow made in my early lectures, I needed an online platform. Social media can of course be incredibly helpful in communication and friendship building, as other studies have shown (Caplan, 2003).
However, when starting this big new stage in my life, I was naturally curious to see how my other friends who were all in similar positions were coping with the same change, as Social Comparison Theory suggests (Festinger, 1954). I found that social media users are often inclined to portray their ‘best selves’ online (Chua & Chang, 2016), which set incredibly high expectations for my own university experience. In this sense, social media added to the pressure of starting university, and made me feel as if I was the only person who wasn’t having the best week of their life during freshers.
‘The ostrich problem’ (Webb et al., 2013), could be a factor aggravating this, as it indicates that those who are not happy with their progression, tend not to monitor it. In this case, people who were finding the transition to university slightly more complicated, probably weren’t posting about it online. Consequently, my Instagram feed was teeming with people revelling in freshers and having a seamless integration into their new university lives. This made me feel more alone in my experience. I can now confidently say that I was not the only person who was not having the time of their life during the first few weeks at university! In fact, I found the first few months quite terrifying.
My goal when entering university was to fit in with new people, a new city, and also to learn to live by myself. According to a meta-analysis of 138 studies (Harkin et al., 2016), goal monitoring has proven to be a strong predictor of goal progression. For my generation, goal monitoring is often conducted publicly through the use of social media posts. These posts, depicting everyone’s fabulous experiences, acted as reference values for my goal monitoring, and also as the comparative element of reviewing my progress at Sheffield University. The act of constantly scouring for a comparative measure to assess my own progress now seems to me a miserable Narcissus-like degeneration.
Finally deleting social media
That lecture really was the catalyst for change. I had been a self- and phone-absorbed teenager, and gazing into Narcissus’ pool, reflected back at me was a truth I had denied: social media was facilitating my social comparisons, and in turn damaging my self-esteem.
My increased confidence at university has helped me to recognise these negative effects, while university itself has provided me with various psychological frameworks to explore how and why those effects shaped my teenage years. Where social modelling felt necessary to shape my younger behaviour and ideals (Bandura, 1900s), I have realised I want to live and enjoy my youth as a time to grow and explore. I don’t want to make comparisons between myself and others, whether upwards or downwards. For me at least, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, ‘comparison is the thief of joy’.
I can’t say I feel completely free of the pull of social media. I miss seeing the Instagram posts updating me on the lives of my friends who are now spread all across the country. But it does feel liberating to regain the locus of control over my life. I won’t be doomed to the fate of Narcissus, and I have my passionate and persuasive lecturer to thank for that.
References
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