According to the latest report of the Junta de Andalucía93% of Andalusians between the ages of 16 and 25 make daily use of some social network. Instagram It is crowned as the digital platform that takes the most hours from us per day: an average of 180 minutes.
At work, the advantages of social networks can be endless. They are a virtually free business tool, a public showcase, and a channel for establishing global relationships at the click of a button. In recent years, advertising and the creation of corporate profiles have made social networks a new market.
This is the case of Sheila Hernandezfounder of the newspaper @es.decirdiario, which currently has more than half a million followers, being the third most followed digital newspaper in Spain on Instagram. With 792,000 followers, the journalist admits that “there is a professional dependency when your work project depends exclusively on you, but I have learned to distinguish between healthy dependency and toxic dependency. I have never let social networks dominate me,” explains the woman from Almeria.
“Instagram’s algorithm continues to be, on many occasions, the cause of a great frustration when you put all of yourself, when your head generates certain expectations and for some reason that many of us are unaware of, that post does not achieve the success that you think it deserves,” says the young woman. “That is why it is very necessary have mental strength and know that there are aspects of this platform that escape youwhich you cannot control. We have to understand that there will be times when you can’t reach people because Instagram just doesn’t want it to show, no matter what you do.”
Sheila does not compare with other similar profiles. The Andalusian is committed to quality journalism where immediacy does not always prevail. “I don’t mind being the second or third person to publish a certain piece of news. I prefer to invest time and resources in contrasting because my followers deserve it. I don’t compare myself to anyone. The value of my work does not depend on the repercussion that a post has,” she adds.
However, Instagram can become quite a serious threat to our mental health. One of the protagonists of Insiders, the Netflix reality show, adam lazarus, be honest and explain the obsession that this platform came to generate in your day to day. “I couldn’t falter. should always be fine“, assures the Sevillian. “I abandoned social networks for a while because my mental health was crying out for me,” he confesses. “I was On the edge of the precipice. I almost fell into the trap of showing more than 20,000 people a lie, but I knew how to stop in time.”
“During my time on reality, both my colleagues and I received psychological help to face what was coming, among other aspects, to know how to face the comments of the viewers on Instagram after exposing our lives publicly”, he points out.
It is estimated that addiction to social networks affects a 5% of the young population and that dependence is the same (almost higher) than that of tobacco or alcohol.
“There came a time when my state of mind depended on the success of a published photo. The tension generated by working for some brands that pay you to appear on your wall was unbearable,” he concluded.
diseases related to inappropriate use of Instagram
According to the Sevillian psychiatrist, Alvaro Moleonthe misuse of Instagram “brings serious addictions”.
“When we publish photos or videos and we see that they generate social success, we release dopamine, generating pleasure. This implies that there are young people and adolescents who They can lose up to ten hours daily“explains the doctor.
“Instagram can be a positive tool, but we must use it with measure and care, setting a limit. Most mobile phones already allow us to control the time to use social networks and thus try to make it a training platform where we visit informative profiles and not just accounts that do not contribute anything to our personal development,” says Moleón.
A very high percentage of photos uploaded to Instagram are retouched, which leads to a personal and other people’s idealization of your physical appearance. There are many young people who follow influencers who show a perfect, idyllic life. This pushes many adolescents to have these types of aspirations and end up living (virtually) in a lie.
“The comparison that we see daily with the count of ‘likes’, can even lead to depressive anxious disorders, above all, in minds that are more immature and that are in full development” he continues. “Clear cases of anxiety are seen when a publication does not work. We see more and more episodes in consultation and it is something that we have to rationalize.
Among the problems related to the inappropriate use of the application are: suicidal thoughts, anxiety and depression, insecurities, addiction, compulsive need to be connected for fear of losingknow something, distorted view of reality, or poor sleep habitsamong others.
