The Social Self’s Impact on Mental Wellbeing
The Finding
In their May 2022 Rapid Report, the Global Mind Project — a collective that publishes data regarding mental health among Internet users — found a distinct change in our existing idea of mental wellbeing by age. Up through at least 2008, young adults reported greater wellbeing than those in midlife (think: “midlife crisis”), with happiness rebounding post-midlife and peaking in old age. When surveying over 200,000 people in 2022, the project found a similar increase in wellbeing from midlife to old age with one stark difference: young people are now reporting worse mental wellbeing than all other age groups.
Source: Sapien Labs, 2022; N=223,000, Global
In what ways has the mental health of our younger population diminished?
The Global Mind Project collects data through a self-report questionnaire called the Mental Health Quotient (MHQ), through which the project identified how today’s young adults (18-24) differed from older generations (55+). Young people experience a greater impact of psychological distress in the form of unwanted, strange or obsessive thoughts; feelings of sadness, distress, or hopelessness; suicidal thoughts; mood swings; guilt and self-blame; confusion or slowed thinking, a sense of being detached from reality; and avoidance and withdrawal. Unlike older adults, they also tend to perceive factors such as their self image; self worth and confidence; relationships with others; energy level; focus and concentration; and emotional resilience to be below satisfaction and/or hinder their general functioning.
What has driven this change in pattern?
Of the six dimensions that the MHQ uses to categorize its factors, young adults showed the biggest decline in the Social Self dimension, which refers to the overall way someone sees themselves in relation to others around them. For this reason, the Global Mind Project proposes that a failure of today’s adolescents to develop a strong Social Self lies at the root of their overall lack of mental wellbeing.
While the 2022 publication date suggests isolation during the pandemic might be a primary driver of this difference, the Social Self dimension had already decreased for young people prior to 2020. Instead, the project points to the internet as a significant factor in weakening the development of a strong Social Self. While online social interactions allow people to stay connected at a distance, an abundance of time spent online means fewer in-person social interactions, which promote observational learning and the development of social skills. Many studies have also found correlations between increased social media use and poor social skills, poor sleep, low self-esteem, more difficulty making friends, and mental health issues such as depression and anxiety.
Altogether, the data seems to support the Global Mind Project’s assessment of the internet and social media use inhibiting the adolescent development of a Social Self. To combat this problem, the project suggests taking a preventative approach that aims to strengthen young people’s Social Self by regulating their internet use and providing education for appropriate online behavior.
What is missing from this narrative?
At first glance, then, the message of the Rapid Report seems clear: young people are glued to the online world, and this conduct is bringing unprecedented costs to their social development and psychological wellbeing. However, there are some nuances to this conversation that should also be considered.
For instance, although younger people overwhelmingly rated mental issues as more influential to their lives than the older population, they actually reported better physical health. Similarly, the smallest dimensional decline in the younger group was in Mind Body Connection, which refers to the physiological symptoms that tend to appear with mental struggles. The relative maintenance of physical health, despite psychological challenges, seems to conflict with the idea of adolescents staying inside all day on their devices; this may be a topic of interest to warrant future study.
The MHQ also relies on self-reports from an Internet-enabled user base. This method also cannot provide evidence of causal effects between internet use and mental health. More notably, it lends to a self-selection bias in which participants who spend more time online are more likely to discover and take this survey.
Thus, it would be interesting to compare the aforementioned results to individuals who live in an Internet-enabled environment but do not personally partake in social media or other internet use, such as children or adolescents who already have limited access due to parental restrictions. Do these young people have better mental health and social skills than their online peers? Or, in a world that is already so infused with technology, do they feel further ostracized and lonely due to a lack of virtual connection?
