Social Breakdown

Relaxing in her living room, senior Danya Issawi sits PJ-clad on her couch for a night at home. The show “Revenge” streams from Netflix on the Mac in her lap. Looking away from the screen, she focuses her attention to the iPhone at her side. She opens Instagram and Twitter, then finally looks at the long queue of Snapchat stories with pictures of friends holding solo cups, dressed in party clothes. She told her friends she needed a calm night at home, and now she flickers between feeling relieved she’s not there, and regretting it.

Issawi, and many other East students, call this feeling the “Fear of Missing Out” or “FOMO,” a comical nickname tied to what experts say is an emerging issue in this generation’s culture. The nickname is a label for feelings of anxiety, dependency and overall negative mental health changes. These health effects stem from the all-pervasive nature of technology, causing youth to feel hyper-conscious of what is going on around them.

“Sometimes you just want to stay home, but at the same time your friends are going out to do something, and you know that you are going to see it on social media later and you don’t want to be the person that isn’t there,” Issawi said.  “And for some reason its almost like — not exactly addictive — but you feed off of it, and the fact that you are going to be missing out on something, so you can’t miss out on it.”

Dr. Ashley Smith, clinical psychologist and researcher of anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorders at the Kansas City Center for Anxiety Treatment, believes there is a correlation between the growing amounts of anxiety disorders and the amount of technology youth are exposed to.

She sees the increase of stress in many of her patients lives from constantly feeling the pressure to respond to texts, browse social media and put forth a certain image of themselves. In turn, studies show this chronic social media usage to be affecting sleep patterns, relationships between people and overall mental well-being.

Sociology and AP American History teacher Vicki Arndt-Helgeson agrees with Dr. Smith that not only is technology affecting health, but it is changing the very fabric of our society, the way people function.

“Part of being a teenager is that you are learning how to navigate the social world,” Dr. Smith said. “Now you have this whole virtual world too and it can be confusing to not know how to handle it. Specifically, with things like “likes” and “retweets,” it can be validating. You are getting instant gratification, but what happens then if you don’t get it? It can set you up for a feeling of non-acceptance or breed this pressure for ‘I must always post bigger and better.’ Then its a question of if you are being authentic or not.”

A group of six East students were selected from each grade level to take part in a group discussion about how technology influences their peer interactions and mental health. All six students involved in the discussion sleep with their phones by their bedside, and even wake up to respond or check texts on occasion.

Additionally, they compared the amount of time spent on their phones nightly. Freshman Tommy Hise said he spends up to two hours a night before bed combing through posts. Sophomore Molly Manske said that all the time she spent on social media made it easier for her to procrastinate and slack on homework.

All the students during the discussion shared the view that social media seemed to be controlling them, more than they were controlling the devices at their fingertips.

Arndt-Helgesen, having taught at East for over 20 years has seen the evolution of social media and its effects on students and relationships in a classroom setting. She sees the compulsion of technology for students. She watches them constantly check their phones, or keep them on their desk during the hour. Many students, she says, even “cradle” their smartphones in their hands during the lesson, unable to disconnect from it.

“I take a look at class discussions and sometimes there’s that reluctance of exploring ideas with other people…partly [because of] short, quick text messages, we never have to really interact,” Arndt-Helgesen said about changes she has observed in the classroom. “I think the question we should be asking is ‘to what extent do we make decisions, and to what extent does the internet define that.’ We know it will shape behaviors, but what are the ways we end up responding to it.”

Ultimately, Arndt-Helgesen, Dr. Smith and the students that participated in the discussion all agree that while we have the potential to shape the internet, it is up to us to decide how we will shape it, or continue to let it shape our health and behaviors.

Issawi calls it a “double edged sword,” because even though she and junior Mackenzie Hanna agree that social media has had negative influences on their attitudes, they say it has also opened up the door to more awareness of global issues and positive trends.

Both say they spend a lot of time reading blogs they find on Facebook and Twitter about current events and positive lifestyle choices like health and fitness. But even with the positives of social media communication, they both still say they struggle with balancing their usage of technology in an ever-evolving world, making it hard to know how much connection is too much.

“I think everyone agrees that social media can be unhealthy, but we don’t change anything,” Hanna said. “It’s just kind of like the thought of ‘this is how it is.’ I think everyone agrees that it’s not good for our health or self esteem, but we still do it, like after this conversation I am still going to check Instagram and Twitter, but I know we need to get better about it.”