Facebook Depression in Teens  

by Health with Imei on 03/28/2011

The very place where many teens feel socially connected is the same breeding zone for depression in teens. Some pediatric doctors are warning parents and educators to pay attention to how teens are using Facebook because of the increase in symptoms of depression in this age group. There are steps you can take to help your teen or yourself to avoid Facebook Depression.

Does using Facebook make you feel depressed?

In a way, Facebook Depression is a type of Contender Syndrome, and you may want to take a moment to review the recent post I wrote on subject. More specifically, Facebook Depression is being linked to teenagers, sexting, cyber bullying, and tallying the numbers of Facebook friends as a means of evaluating a teen’s overall social standing. But like Contender Syndrome, the milieu of Facebook goes well beyond a teen’s typical neighborhood, extending into strangers, celebrities, and “always happy” status updates that can skew the perspective of the user. If a teen feels that his or her life doesn’t have all the positive, happy, and “fabulous” photos of smiling kids, vacations, friends, and sensational events, s/he may conclude that there is something wrong rather than life being normal in comparison to the over-inflated image procurement projected on Facebook.
If you are a parent, educator, or an adult mentor or friend to a teen, what can you do?
Initiate a conversation about Internet use and Facebook. Don’t wait for the to tell you about what’s happening with his or her Facebook use; be curious, and ask.
Remind your teen about how easy it is to get a skewed view of what is “normal”. Sometimes just hearing that life isn’t always roses and cherries, ball games and vacations can help a teen to see the bigger picture.
Offer and remind your teens of other ways to evaluate their social skills besides collecting Facebook friends. Compliment their “IRL” (in real life) skills of meeting friends, keeping friends, and working through conflict. Help them create a hierarchy, where real-life interactions have a certain primacy and importance. Facebook should be a fun place to hang out, but it should not become the place where your teen lives and breathes.
Remember, Facebook use does not “infect” teens with depression. Cutting off a teen from Facebook isn’t the answer to resolving depression in teens. In general, the practices of checking in, formulating status updates, and interacting with others are positive relationship skills your teen will need in an Internet-savvy world. Encourage those skills, and look for classes and workshops that help your teen make good choices with their Internet use.
What if you’re the teen reading this post, and you already feel like you have been affected by Facebook Depression? Here are a few tips for you:
Talk to your parents or a trusted adult. It helps to talk to someone outside your world. Facebook can feel like a microcosm for the world, when in fact, it is not. Getting outside your own perspective can do you a world of good.
Build up some resilience. I do not mean, “Let it roll off your back” or “Grow a tougher skin.” If you are being cyber bullied, or people are saying mean an inappropriate things, you don’t need to listen to that. Unfriend, block, and report those people. At the same time, building resilience includes the ability to hear, judge, reflect, reject, and replace what people say or do with what you need to become an emotionally stronger individual.
I often help teens reflect on the layers of communication:
1. What do I feel?
2. What am I communicating about what I feel?
3. What do I think someone feels about what I am communicating?
4. What is I think about what someone feels about what I am communicating?
The last two parts of the layers of communicating are the “stuff” of adult psychotherapy, but teens can learn to build up a bit of a thicker skin when it comes to what other people say about them. If you are a teen and you are struggling with what you hear other people saying about you (i.e. bullying, gossip, strong opinions), talk about this with a trusted adult, and learn how to replace those negative thoughts with what is true about you, or about your progress and growth if you’re working on changing something. While people have the right to their opinions, the way they air them can have an affect on you if you take it to heart. Growing a tougher skin allows you to hear it, but not absorb these opinions. You have the right — and the ability! — to wash them right off your skin.
Acknowledge how you feel about what you’re seeing on Facebook. Just knowing how you feel may lead you to what you need to do. If you’re feeling depressed about what you see on Facebook, you can talk to someone who understand, you can stop reading updates, or take a break from your Facebook page for awhile. If you discover you worry about how many Facebook friends you have, that could indicate that you put too much importance on the numbers rather than the quality of the people you know.
Which would you rather have: two friends who would be there for you in a heartbeat if something happened to you? Or 1,000 Facebook friends reading your status update about your emergency, and saying, “I’m sorry you’re having a bad day?” While I rarely tell you what you should think, I’d highly encourage you to choose the two IRL friends any day.
Do you know a teen struggling with Facebook Depression? Do you think this is a serious phenomenon of modern teen culture? Are you a teen who obsesses about Facebook? Please share your stories and comments here.