How Twitter Fuels Anxiety

August 19, 2017

Don’t Use Social Media To Impress People, Use It To Impact people.”

There are two main types of anxiety; State anxiety, which is a temporary fearful reactions to some threat, and trait anxiety, which is a prolonged and chronic tendency to worry and fear. Several social media forms can trigger both types of anxiety, and Twitter is at the top. It reminds those perennial anxious people that there is always something worth worrying about that can trigger anxiety in even nonchalant users.

There is a continuous influx of short and new information on this medium, bombardment, which is is a big reason for why Twitter fuels anxiety

Coupled with this the fact that users have a tendency to follow more successful and accomplished people, is instrumental in laying the foundations of a powerful cocktail of biased comparison for anxiety-ridden individuals. Twitter can inflame professional anxiety, but can also lead to professional success.

Undoubtedly Twitter fuels anxiety, and the users on twitter have to compete with a lot of different voices that scream at you the moment you log on. Questions like:

  • Why haven’t you finished your novel, it’s been more than 2 years!
  • Why don’t you have any children already?
  • How can you write such a biased untruthful article?

These questions can flood your twitter feed and leave you anxiety ridden. It is indeed a magnifying glass for fear and doubt and a megaphone for success and achievements. Subsequently, comparison of your life’s uncertainties with the accomplishments of another individual will definitely result in anxiety.

Comparisons on social media generally tend to be ‘upward’ comparisons.

Users tend to compare themselves with others who appear to be more accomplished or are at a higher status and this can result in feelings of discontent, jealousy, and anxiety. Parents always advised us that we should never compare our insides to the outsides of another. But Twitter is something that promotes constant comparison of one’s insides, i.e., the fears, anxieties, and insecurities, with the outsides of other individuals, i.e., their edited write-ups, stunning selfies, and achievements.

Someone is always going to be better than you in any aspect of your life

And since Twitter users generally follow other users who are famous or accomplished, the user will constantly be kept aware of his/her lack of success and how others are better off than him/her. This can fuel anxiety and other emotional disturbances.

Twitter offers one of the simplest ways to quantify one’s worth, i.e., via the number of retweets, likes, and followers. People are worth more than the sum of these few things, but the less accomplished who are addicted to twitter tend to feel worthless on most days which is a true recipe for stress and anxiety.

Anxiety works by continuously drawing attention towards itself. This is also the same way in which Twitter works. This social media platform causes users to seek more and more of it with shorter duration of time, each time, every time. The easily visible retweets and likes, the push notifications, and the user-friendly feed and newsfeed bar, etc. are all designed to ensure that users keep coming back for more lest they miss something important.

Promotion of moderation is not a characteristic of social media, which is a big reason why Twitter fuels anxiety.

Begin Re-structuring Your Thought Patterns And Behaviours To Start Eliminating Anxiety From Your Life Today. 

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