Our Pixelated Lives

Andrea Li is an internationally famous jewelry designer and fabricator as well as a fashion expert. She has grown her business and brand as an online native and has unique insight to the world of social media.Her work is exquisite and can be viewed at Andrea Li. Andrea is guest posting with us this month and is presenting her unique insight to our world of pixels.

To my over 51k followers/friends my face will never amount to
 anything more than a number of pixels on a computer screen.

My interactions and digital musings are usually carefully curated. A combination of reviewing images before posting or allowing tags to insure each one highlights my best attributes. To researching throughly before words are set free into the digital sphere. Yes, even these words, has allowed myself and much of the world to exist in two realities.

Our lives online can often be compared to a reality tv show. Seemingly real but entirely scripted. In fact both reality tv and social media frequently share a word used to correlate a possible resulting psychological effect on its participants. It is ‘depression’ and it comes up along side of other terms like narcissistic tendencies, insecure personalities, negative relationship outcomes, unhappy experiences and the list goes on. Dr. Jamie Huysman, who has a special practice in which he treats victims of reality shows has treated over 800 people for clinical depression since he founded AfterTVCare in 1992.

Selfie culture has fed greatly into our culture of vanity. Even the term ‘selfie’ has permeated our behavior so deeply that in 2013 is was introduced to the Oxford dictionary as an official word. With the rise of popularity of smart phones and their cameras marches in an entire industry of selfie editing apps. Giving a whole new meaning of ‘phoning’ in images of ourselves. Much like the highly photoshopped images of models we see in glossy magazines. With apps like FaceTune it has enabled us to present a perfect version us to the world. With perfection being so prevalent the honesty of who we really are is becoming less and less important. Are the pressures of this new paradigm becoming a systemic problem for humanity?

Lets pull the focus back to our data usage and its effects. A topic so strongly recognized due to the percentages of users across every age category that a growing field of study called Media Psychology has emerged. Its focus is to study a growing paradox of what was an initially fun, easy and harmless way to stay in touch that now impacts human psychology in ways we never quite anticipated. The widening gap between or real lives and our digital lives has never been so vast. Studies are increasing showing that this duality is causing us to be more vulnerable to low self esteem, depression and loneliness.

How did we get here in the first place. Certainly we must be able to link it back to our basic human psychology. In order for social media sites to be heavily used, about 73% of online adults engage on a social platform of some kind, there must be some form of motivation. Indeed recent neuropsychological research may point to some of these. Self disclosure would be one reason as it activates the intrinsic reward system in our brain. Much like the way that powerful primary rewards such as food and sex affect our natural positive reinforcing chemicals like dopamine.  Similarly the need to belong that plays a role in our self presentation and social comparison has been purported to motivate people to use Facebook. In Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs  belonging-ness ranks as a top motivator in social behavior. The findings of research conducted by Toma and Hancock 2013 found that Facebook profiles helped to satisfy individuals in self-worth and self-integrity. Two driving forces that can productively or detrimentally influence inter-group relations.

So now we have an idea of how we got here now what? The reasons of what motivates us to use social media is a potent cocktail that heavily influences our overall self esteem. So its not surprising that there are a myriad of ways that all this could go potentially sideways on us. Correlation between depression and social media have been established by numerous studies. Findings prove evidence of more clinical symptoms of depression with participants who spend more time online and Facebook image management. Much of these findings link back to comparisons of the work of social psychologist Leon Festinger and his ‘social comparison theory’.  Measuring ourselves to others’ failures and successes is almost guaranteed to have deleterious effects on our self esteem. Recent research conducted by Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan and Philippe Verduyn of Leuven University of Belgium supports this theory. It was the first study that followed a group of Facebook users for an extended period of time. One citation from their studies is that one out of three would feel worse after checking what their friends were doing. Especially if the posts were boastful in nature. The over-arching result being that the more someone uses Facebook the less satisfied they were with their own life. 

The social impact as a whole goes beyond the individual psychological studies of traits however. There are stories surfacing of unexpected suicides or drug overdoses from the impending pressure of perfection to people going broke to appear Pinterest perfect. The idea of keeping up with the Jonses’ has reached new and frightening heights. With the digital age we can extrapolate our real lives into complete fantasy. We are in peril of losing our identities to something that is ultimately unsustainable. Obviously our predications for allowing our digital interactions to become so extreme cannot be widely quantified. Not all of us can be placed categorically into the stories that reach our headlines however it beckons us to be more concisely honest about who we are and what are our motivations are when we engage in our digital lives. Understanding that we all are affected in some way and that our posts has the power to affect others.

How do we successfully bridge the gap between our two realities? You may never see it online.