When did social media go wrong?

Despite lots of media attention about the negative effects of social media. it is still widely used. I started thinking about when social media became unhealthy. Any answer is subjective and complex and probably depends on individual factors such as personal experiences, societal norms, and technological advancements.

I wrote on another blog about opinions about how social media is bad for your health. Most people would agree with that idea, and yet social media has undeniably transformed communication and society in numerous ways. While it offers many benefits, there have been turning points that have contributed to negative perceptions of social media.

Here’s my list of some turning points:
Privacy Concerns: As social media platforms evolved and became more integrated into people’s lives, concerns about privacy and data security emerged. High-profile incidents, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook, raised awareness about the potential misuse of personal data collected by social media companies. This eroded trust among users and led to increased scrutiny of social media platforms’ privacy practices.

Spread of Misinformation and Fake News: Social media has facilitated the rapid spread of misinformation, rumors, and fake news. The ease of sharing content on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp has made it challenging to verify the accuracy of information, leading to the proliferation of false narratives and conspiracy theories. This phenomenon has had serious consequences, including the exacerbation of social divisions, political polarization, and public health misinformation.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment: Social media platforms have provided avenues for cyberbullying, harassment, and online abuse. The relative anonymity afforded by the internet, combined with the viral nature of social media, has enabled individuals to target others with hurtful or threatening behavior. This has had particularly harmful effects on young people, leading to mental health issues, social withdrawal, and even suicide in some cases.

Impact on Mental Health: Research has highlighted the negative effects of excessive social media use on mental health, including increased feelings of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem. Factors such as social comparison, cyberbullying, and the pressure to present a curated and idealized version of one’s life contribute to these negative outcomes. Additionally, the addictive nature of social media platforms, characterized by endless scrolling and notifications, can exacerbate feelings of stress and overwhelm.

Erosion of Civil Discourse: Social media was once seen as one way to “democratize” the web. But it has been criticized for contributing to the erosion of civil discourse and the rise of polarized and hostile online environments. Echo chambers and filter bubbles, where users are exposed primarily to viewpoints that align with their own, can reinforce existing biases and prevent constructive dialogue across ideological divides. This has implications for democracy, as it hampers informed decision-making and compromises the ability to find common ground on important societal issues.

So, when and why did social go wrong?

When I was teaching a graduate course in social media, we talked about its timeline history. That was 2016 and we were only talking about the negative effects as a fairly new point on that timeline. If I were teaching that today, I would need to add developments in the history of social media that mark shifts toward negative effects:

Here is a start on that list:
Proliferation of Platforms: Social media platforms began to gain popularity in the early 2000s with sites like MySpace and Friendster. As more platforms emerged and gained widespread adoption, the sheer volume of social interactions online increased dramatically.

Introduction of News Feeds: The introduction of news feeds, where users could see updates from friends and pages they followed in real-time, marked a significant shift in how people consumed content on social media. This change led to increased time spent on platforms and potentially unhealthy comparison behaviors.

Rise of Smartphones: The widespread adoption of smartphones made access to social media constant and ubiquitous. People could now engage with social media anytime, anywhere, blurring the boundaries between online and offline life.

Algorithmic Changes: Social media platforms began to implement algorithms to curate users’ feeds based on their interests and behaviors. While these algorithms aimed to increase engagement, they also contributed to echo chambers, filter bubbles, and the spread of misinformation.

Data Privacy Concerns: High-profile data breaches and scandals, such as the Cambridge Analytica scandal involving Facebook, highlighted how social media platforms could compromise users’ privacy and security. These revelations eroded trust in social media companies and raised concerns about the ethical implications of their practices.

Overall, while social media has brought about numerous positive advancements in communication and connectivity, its negative effects have become increasingly apparent over time. The exact point at which it became “unhealthy” is difficult to pinpoint, but these developments have collectively contributed to growing concerns about the impact of social media on individuals and society.

Getting Lost

Sometimes it is good to get lost.

I’m not what could be considered a serious hiker. Maybe a serious walker. My knees don’t allow the hiking I once was able to do. I can think of two times I was in the woods and got lost. I can think of many more times that I did not know where I was at some point, but that’s not the same thing.

In one case, I was walking and did not time my leaving very well with the setting of the sun, so I ended up in darkness. Everyone knows that roads and trails don’t look the same when you’re on your way out at night as they did when you were on your way in during the daylight.

This was in a woods that I had walked many times before, and I knew that if I walked straight in any direction I would be “out” in an hour or two. And yet, I panicked. I found myself running and following what seemed like a trail, though not a familiar one. And I know those are the wrong things to do.

The other time I was lost it was a bit more serious. I was on a section of the Appalachian Trail with a group, but I hurt my knee and was walking/limping at a snail’s pace. I was slowing down the group. Someone offered me a map with a shortcut back to the parking area (they wanted to finish the loop they were hiking) and I said that they should go on without me and I would head back on my own. Not a good idea on my part, but they went ahead.

We had been hiking for about 2 hours, so it would be at least 2 or 3 hours for me to get back using the shortcut at my slow pace. They had at least 4 hours left to complete the loop.

I was fine until I hit a long downhill section that was just murder on my knee. I made lots of stops, hopping when I could, trying to use my staff as a crutch, and cooling my knee with my water bottle. I was so focused on my knee that I lost the trail. I lost THE trail, but I ended up on some trail.  After 2 hours, I knew I wasn’t passing any landmarks on the map. I knew I couldn’t walk back, so I studied the map trying to figure out where I was on it.

Even though I am pretty good with a map and compass, I couldn’t really fix on any landmarks to triangulate where I was sitting.  I took my best guess at the straightest path to the highway near the cars hoping that if I made it there at least the walking would be easier, and I might even hitchhike a ride to the parking lot.

Now I was off the trail. In my head, I ran several scenarios where I just could not walk anymore or would slip, fall, and break something or get knocked unconscious.  How long before the group would miss me?  And wouldn’t they look for me on the shortcut path I was supposed to follow?

Obviously, I did make it out. I actually arrived at the road, walked to the lot, and arrived just minutes before the group. My shortcut had taken me about 4 hours. I told them I had been there for an hour already, resting my knee and waiting for them to return so that we could go out for dinner and a few beers.

This past week I spotted a book titled  You Are Here: Why We Can Find Our Way to the Moon, but Get Lost in the Mall written by  Colin Ellard,  a psychology professor. He says that Italian homing pigeons navigate using mental maps which include major highways and railroad tracks. He suggests that people make mental map stories to remember their way.

He says that if we were out in the woods, it doesn’t take far (a few hundred yards off course perhaps) for us to become lost.  Then we find it difficult to know if we are walking in a straight line anymore. We can make remarkable turns and still feel that we are walking in a straight line. We also tend to speed up our movement, so we go farther off course faster.

What should we do when lost?  Stop.

Still, I think it’s a good thing to get lost once in a while. On purpose. Preferably in a place where you won’t die of exposure or be attacked by bears if it takes you 6 hours to get out. And you should follow all those rules about telling someone where you are going, taking a map, some food and water, a cell phone…  Of course, all those things also make it, perhaps, too comfortable. Can you really be lost with all that preparation?

And, there’s always that idea of getting lost in a less literal sense.

In writing, I find it’s a good idea to strike out to lands unknown and get lost a bit, if for no other reason than it feels so good to find yourself.

I have a friend who was forced to retire and he did not deal well with the situation. He was lost about what to do with his time and life after 38 years of having it pretty well set on a very clear path day-to-day. I asked him how long it took him after college to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. “I’m not sure I ever did,” he said.

Of course, he ultimately did. It took him about four years of walking down the path to find the one that worked for those 38 years. Maybe it wasn’t the perfect path, but it was a good one.

“So, why do you think it’s reasonable to expect that after being home for a month that you would know what you want to do with the rest of your life?” I said.  “If you said you were taking the next year to try some things and see what appeals to you, it would sound more realistic.”

I think he needed to be lost for a while. He needed his family and friends nearby. He needed a therapist and some medication too. He is a religious person – a believer – and that should help.

He can consult maps. He can draw his own paths on them too. But he needs, like the rest of us, to be lost too if he is ever to find himself.

Seasonal Affective Disorder

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is also known as winter depression or winter blues, and it is a mood disorder in which people who have “normal” mental health throughout most of the year, seem to experience depressive symptoms in the winter. (There are actually a smaller number of people who seem to experience it in the summer, spring or autumn.)

The winter solstice is nearing and the weather in my locale is already feeling less like autumn and more like winter.

Do you experience any severe mood changes when the seasons change? Maybe you start to sleep too much. Your energy level drops. You crave “comfort foods” and sweet and starchy foods. You feel depressed.

Sure, everyone gets these symptoms, but they usually go away quickly on their own. SAD is when it lasts for weeks, months, or throughout the season.

I am not a therapist, but I’ve been through therapy. So, these are some suggestions I have if you feel some winter blues that I hope might help.

Light therapy with sunlight or bright lights is a standard one. Certainly, if you live in a cold climate now, getting to a sunny beach would be nice – but that’s not always practical. The special lights can be expensive, to own (there are places where you can go use them too), so my first recommendation is getting out into real sunlight. Add to that getting into the natural world – a park, a wooded area, a forest – and you increase the power of the sunlight. Even on the coldest days, I try to get outside, even if that means just having coffee on the deck with my face nd hands exposed for 20 minutes. There are low-cost light therapy bulbs and devices that might work for you too.

Let me put in a good word for Vitamin D.  It’s a good vitamin for preventing osteoporosis, depression, prostate cancer, and breast cancer. It even affects diabetes and obesity. It is such an underrated nutrient – probably because it’s free.

Don’t rush to buy a vitamin D supplement. Your body makes it when sunlight touches your skin. Since no one can make money selling you sunlight, it doesn’t get much promotion. Vitamin D is produced by your skin when exposed to ultraviolet radiation from natural sunlight. Those rays cannot penetrate glass, so sitting on the couch looking out the window or in a car is not going to help. I read that it is nearly impossible to get adequate amounts of vitamin D from your diet. Sunlight exposure is the only reliable way to generate vitamin D in your own body. Of course, we don’t all get out into the sunlight as much in winter, so supplements can make up for that during winter.

Another “official” treatment is ionized-air using an air ionizer (or negative ion generator) which is a device that uses a high-voltage charge to ionize air molecules. Negative ions, or anions, are particles with one or more extra electrons, conferring a net negative charge to the particle. Ions are de-ionized by seeking earthed conductors, such as walls and ceilings. These negative ions are positive for your mental health.

Do you know where you can surround yourself with these negative ions? Around water. Water generates negative ions. Breaking the surface tension of water, by waves, waterfalls, water over rocks in a stream or evaporation releases negative hydrogen ions into the atmosphere. These negative ions can stick to different free radicals and so are very beneficial for our health. Get thee to some water!

Some studies have shown that carefully timed supplements of the hormone melatonin can help people with SAD.

What’s the takeaway from this post? Get out of the house – especially in winter when the season and cold tells you to stay in.  Get sunlight. Get into nature. Find a place with moving falling water. Bring a friend or loved one. Walk and look at what is around you. Breathe deeply. Take a hike. Feel the cold that tells you are alive. If these things are not possible for you, try the alternatives.

The worst way to treat those depressive bouts is to do what depression tells you to do – stay home, avoid people, eat junk, drink alcohol, take drugs, smoke, and sleep excessively.  You have to force yourself to do the opposite, and if you do, it will get easier to stay on that path. If you know someone going through SAD, try to get them on the right path.

• Winter Blues: Everything You Need to Know to Beat Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Seasonal Affective Disorder For Dummies
• The Light of Day: A Mindbody Approach to Overcoming Seasonal Affective Disorder
• Seasonal Affective Disorder: Practice and Research

Circadian Rhythms

For many years, I was a “night owl”? I thought I got by pretty well on just about five hours sleep, but it caught up with me. When I tried to reset that biological clock inside me, it required a little research.

There is a little bundle of nerve cells in the front of your brain called the suprachiasmatic nuclei. It is responsible for many timing functions in mammals. One thing we share with most animals and plants is biological rhythms. Also known as circadian rhythms, it’s our biological “clock” and it controls things like our body temperature, alertness, appetite, and hormone secretion.

We probably have other controls in our genes, and it seems that all living creatures run on several different biological clocks simultaneously.

It also affects our sleep timing. It might surprise you that sleepiness does not continuously increase as time passes. Your sleepiness – desire and ability to fall asleep – is influenced by how long it has been since from your last good sleep, but also by circadian rhythms.

When people have sleep problems because of circadian rhythms, it’s about the timing of sleep. If your clock is off, you can’t sleep and wake at the times required for a normal day.

Of course, what is a “normal” day? Even if your circadian clock is right, normal is a continuum.  Scientists recognize chronotypes – “larks” or “morning people” and  “owls” or “night people.”

The biological clocks inside us make it possible for us to recognize the passage of short intervals of time, but others (like in our retina) respond to light and regulate our bodily functions over 24 hours and even longer cycles.

Time may be a human construct, but our perception of time depends very much on things like light and your body temperature.

How does we “reset” our clocks? People who switch to working a night shift from a day shift are able to do it.

There are simple treatments: avoid naps, caffeine and other stimulants. A sleep diary (like a dream journal) where one records sleeping and waking times with related information creates an awareness that is helpful and may even allow you to do some self-diagnosis.

Actual treatments use light therapy to advance or delay sleep. It’s a technique that also gets plants to bloom on a controlled schedule, and gets chickens to lay eggs more often.

Additional Reading
Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks that Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing

The Mad Moon of November

The November 2023 Full Moon is late in the month on November 27, 4:16 AM EST or 9:16 AM UTC. It is the third Full Moon of the autumn 2023 season, and it is in Gemini. The dates of the Full Moons vary with our calendar Decemeber’s Full Moon will be the day after Christmas in 2024. Next year it will be on December 15.

The common name for this Full Moon is the Beaver Moon and I have written about that name before. Some say the name comes from Native Americans setting beaver traps during this month, while others say the name comes from the heavy activity of beavers building their winter dams. During the time of the fur trade in the U.S., the Beaver Moon indicated it was time to trap beavers for their now-thickened winter pelts.

I’m not a supporter of trapping animals, and beavers are not a common animal for most of us to see doing that winter preparation, so I like to use new names for the Full Moons each year. I have been writing about November Full Moons for quite a number of years and I will at some point run out of names for the different months – if I or the blog lasts that long.

Photo by Sky Noir on Flickr

I had made a note last year to write about this 2023 November Full Moon as being called the Mad Moon, but I cannot find where that idea came from. Perhaps, a reader knows what culture uses the name. Still, the Moon has been connected with madness for a very long time.

In the first century AD, Pliny the Elder thought the Full Moon gave birth to especially heavy nocturnal dew and caused the brain to become “unnaturally moist,” leading to both madness and epileptic attacks. Aristotle also believed that the lunar effect was caused by the Moon’s influence on water. The human body is about 80% water and both of them believed that the brain was greatly influenced by the Moon because it is “the moistest” organ.

The Roman goddess of the moon, Luna, is the Latin word for “moon” and it is found in the English word “lunatic”.However, literature reviews and metanalyses have found no correlation between the lunar cycle and human biology or behavior.

For centuries, people have believed that the Moon affects human behavior. The Latin lunaticus, meaning “moonstruck” was also associated in ancient times with not only madness but also epilepsy which they thought ere caused by the Moon and peaked at a Full Moon.

The goddess Luna also was sometimes associated with women and even in much more modern times there were studies that seemed to find that “a large proportion” of menstruations occurred around the New Moon. This led the researcher to deduce that ovulation periods tended to coincide with the Full Moon. However, more recent research contradicts the notion that menstrual cycles often synch with Moon phases.

You will still find articles, like this detailed one from the BBC titled “The mood-altering power of the Moon,” that suggests that something odd is happening because of the Moon phases. They report that there is some evidence that sleep varies across the lunar cycle. For instance, a 2013 study conducted under the highly-controlled conditions of a sleep laboratory found that people took five minutes longer to fall asleep on average, and slept for 20 minutes less overall, around a Full Moon, compared to during the rest of the month – even though they weren’t exposed to any moonlight. Measurement of their brain activity, meanwhile, suggested that the amount of deep sleep they experienced dropped by 30%. Even so, a follow-up study failed to replicate the findings.

Another article asks why we still believe in these medical associations to the Moon when the overwhelming scientific information says there are no connections. In defense of believers of “lunacy,” the writer says that the Moon does exercise some influence on Earth, from the pull of the tides to the mating cycles of corals and glowworms, and so it’s not really surprising that people wonder it might be shaping their lives too.

The November Full Moon is also called the Mourning Moon because it’s the last full moon before the winter solstice. According to pagan traditions, it’s a time to let go of past troubles or grief and look forward to a new season and soon, a new year.

In the past, I have written about the November Full Moon as being called Hunters Moon, Snow Moon, (a name used by others for December and February) Sleeping Moon Before the Dark Moon,  Frost Moon, Trading Moon, Sleeping Moon (Celtic), Moon When Water Freezes and the Sassafras Moon.

Among the Incas, it was a time of the Ayamarca, or Festival of the Dead, and in Tibet, they celebrate the Feast of Lanterns, a festival of the shortest days of the Sun.

Being near American Thanksgiving Day, we might take note that the Japanese festival honoring the goddess of the kitchen is at this time. It honors the women who prepare the daily meals. You might have a kitchen goddess in your home this Thanksgiving.

Weekend Mind

This blog is called Weekends in Paradelle and Paradelle is an imaginary place that I go to on weekends. Of course, just because it is imaginary doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It does.

I thought about that when I read Weekends at Bellevue by Julie Holland. Yeah, there’s the weekend connection, but what came to mind was also the idea of being someplace that is not real, and yet you ARE there. Is that crazy?

Julie Holland’s memoir is about her nine years as a doctor on the weekend shift at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. Even people who don’t live in New York City have heard of Bellevue.  If you get sent to Bellevue, you must be insane, is the way most people think about it.

In her stories of those years, we meet drunks, sociopaths, schizophrenics, and a lot of mentally ill homeless people who have no place to go and choose crazy as a way to find a warm place to sleep. She was in charge of the psychiatric emergency room, doing that strange triage that decides who goes upstairs to the psych ward, or off with the police or back to the streets.

The book was an easy read with lots of short chapters and a style that lends itself to my on/off reading style. I had heard her interviewed years ago (on Science Friday and on Fresh Air) and she said she was afraid the book wouldn’t read like a book. I think she means that there isn’t really a narrative thread to it, and it doesn’t build to some big ending where something extraordinary happens.

It covers some of her personal life that led her to Bellevue (student days, rock and roll dreams) and her own psychotherapy sessions. We learn about her sexual explorations and her marriage and then about the birth of her children which leads to her deciding to leave the hospital so that she could live a more normal work-during-the-week and get-away-on-the-weekends existence.

One lesson to take away from the book is the fragility of our mental state. She writes online:

“No one is immune from mental illness.  Over the years, I admitted heiresses and art dealers, altar boys and college students, homecoming queens, studio executives, bankers, lawyers, correction officers, and the list goes on. No matter who you are, what you do for a living, how much money you have in the bank, or how often you go to church, circumstances can transpire that will bring you to Bellevue. This is one of the hardest lessons for our patients to learn.

My years at Bellevue taught me many things, life lessons I could never have hoped to receive elsewhere, but the main take-home message was this: cherish your sanity, for it can be lost in the blink of an eye. Sometimes I saw the same patients repeatedly, alcoholics and addicts who were hitting bottom in regular cycles, showing up when their funds ran out. Other times, however, I met patients with no psychiatric history, who ended up at Bellevue when a bad break-up led to a suicide attempt, or a shared cigarette at a bar led to a PCP-induced psychosis. There are so many ways in which a life can suddenly unravel, and many of my patients could specify just when that started to happen for them–whether it was joining the army, leaving home for college, or living through the death of their child.”

In one interview, she surprised me by talking about her interest in the use of psychedelic drugs as treatments. Back when she write the bookmore than a decade ago, that treatment was far less acceptable than it is becoming now. She was also interested in research being done using medical marijuana (cannabis) and how psilocybin (magic mushrooms) might be used to aid people dying.

She has written a book on MDMA (ecstasy) called  Ecstasy : The Complete Guide : A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA. The book is described as being a source of reliable information for recreational users and for educating the public about potential clinical uses for the drug. MDMA was used as an adjunct to psychotherapy for over a decade until the Drug Enforcement Administration classified it as a Schedule I drug in 1985. It then went underground and is today increasingly popular as a party drug.

She also mentioned referring her patients to books like The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment by Eckhart Tolle. That’s a book that has the “simple” message – that living in the now is the truest path to happiness and enlightenment.  Simple in quotes because it is hard to even describe to someone what “living in the now” means. Give that book a chance and read the first two chapters and you may find yourself becoming more conscious of how thoughts and emotions get in the way of your ability to live in peace and happiness. Tolle even includes “breaks” in the book suggesting that readers close the book and think about what they have read. It’s not meant to be a book to read over the weekend and then change your life on Monday morning.

Holland says: “Many of the people I encountered at Bellevue tried strenuously to convince me that they did not belong there. Or vice versa. A big part of my job was learning how to separate the genuinely disturbed from the fakers (some people actually wanted to be admitted to Bellevue, if only for the promise of a clean bed and three meals a day), and to identify the people who had been misunderstood, misdiagnosed, who weren’t mentally ill at all. After a few years of Bellevue experiences under my belt, I developed a sixth sense for what real crazy looked like, sounded like, and yes, smelled like.”

That line between sane and insane is not very sharply defined. The line between the real world we live in, and virtual worlds online is less clear every year. What about the places where we live and places that we go in our mind when we meditate or read or write. Do you see these lines of separation clearly?

I escape to Paradelle on weekends. It exists in my mind and online. How would that be viewed in the waiting room at Bellevue? I’m not barking like a dog, running naked through Times Square, or claiming that I was shoveling snow with the Buddha last weekend. So, I’m not crazy.

Holland again: “There is a diaphanous membrane between sane and insane. It is the flimsiest of barriers, and because any one of us can break through at any time, it terrifies us, causing us to turn our backs on those who remind us of this painful reality. But spending so much time with people who marched out of the lockstep of sanity has made me less forgiving of the way the mentally ill are ostracized and shunned. We owe them something better. And we should remember that the barrier separating “them” from “us” is not nearly as secure as we might think.”

We worry about having a heart attack or getting cancer, but Holland reminds us that the odds are a lot better that we will suffer from a mental illness. Think about that.