“Comparison is the thief of joy”
Theodore Roosevelt
The parallel rise in mental health concerns and social media use has not gone unnoticed to most. I think a lot of us are at least vaguely aware of an association between social media use and mental health problems, even in our own lives. There are several ways this link is thought to operate, one of which is through our tendency for social comparison as social media drives a near constant state of comparison to others.
Social comparison, in itself, is a natural phenomenon. Since humans are not particularly strong or fast, group membership was indispensable as a survival strategy for humans. This link between group membership and survival meant that we evolved mechanisms to care about social acceptance the same way we care about physical safety.
Some believe that comparing ourselves to others, especially those we perceive to have high social status, was a good guide to improve our own status and security in the group. In some cases (and in moderation), interpersonal comparison can still be a path to healthy self-improvement.
That said, in the modern social media atmosphere, this tendency to compare ourselves to others is supercharged by the amount of people we are exposed to, the disproportionate amount of attention we pay to those with perceived social status, and our inclination to idealize those people.
Sometimes this comparison is noticeable and simple, like wanting to be on the trip your friend is posting about. However, more often it is happening below the surface of our conscious awareness. Social media is populated with the absolute best moments of everyone’s lives, and even then those moments are highly edited to make them look even better. Those we see present a perfectly happy, healthy, wealthy, and beautiful image.
Predictably, we almost never live up to this image in comparison. On top of that, we naturally tend to follow those who we admire, those in the top 5% of success and wealth for any given field (celebrities, musicians, influencers…). This behaviour invites both negative comparison (we rarely live up to the top 5% of anything, which is okay) and very narrow comparison (we only compare ourselves to the exceptional and public parts of their lives).
For example, we compare our body to that of the fitness influencer, ignoring or idealizing all other aspects of their lives (ones we might even compare favorably to). Naturally, this extremely narrow comparison to the best parts of already exceptional people, leaves us feeling like our lives aren’t that great, or worse, that we aren’t worth much in general.
Understanding that this extremely selective and narrow comparison strategy is not a fair representation of reality is an important first step to helping with this behaviour. Also, recognizing that simply being on social media supercharges this behaviour is an important hint at how we can start to address this pattern.
Stay tuned for part 2 for some specific strategies for helping with this comparison behaviour.
David
Simply Counselling Services