There are two ways of measuring how people think about their own well-being. You can ask them how they feel right now, and you can also ask them how they think about their life overall. In 2013, Facebook had a billion users, and half of them logged in daily. By 2016 there were 1.7 billion users. You might have looked at your own family and thought that the more they used Facebook, the less satisfied they seemed to be with their own lives. You may or may not be pleased or alarmed to find that it’s not just you and your family. A 2013 study (Kross et al., Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults) found that the more young adults used Facebook, the less satisfied with their lives they were.
Here’s the link: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0069841
It’s not fair to just point the finger at Facebook. Research in 2014 found that many children were continuously using Snapchat, WhatsApp and Instagram as well, permanently connected to friends, news, advice and support, as well as finding fake news, bad advice, misogyny and cyber-bullying.
Like anything else, social media is fine in moderation, when it’s balanced against real-life, real-world face-to-face interactions from trusted sources. But as far back as 2016, The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children found 18,878 children admitted to hospital after self-harming, a lot of it due to social media.
"This unhappiness is partly due to the constant pressure they feel, particularly from social media, to have the perfect life or attain a certain image which is often unrealistic.
"They tell us that the need to keep up with friends and the 24/7 nature of technology means they feel they can never escape or switch off.”
Peter Wanless, NSPCC Chief Executive
There's no going back. But Helping Cards can help you and your family to go forward, together, happily and healthily, talking to each other and helping each other, in a clean and tidy home.