Dear PR Matters,
Your recent column about having a positive mindset at work was very helpful. Looking at the bright side of things can really help us in our work and life.
I also realized how attaining this was simple, but like everything else, never easy. My friends and I would like to ask your thoughts on how we can achieve happiness today. While happiness is something we all wish to attain, does social media make this easier or more difficult?
Sincerely,
Tina Y.
Dear Tina,
The pursuit of happiness is top of mind for most of us today. The United Nations has declared March 20 the International Day of Happiness, while World Smile Day is celebrated on October 20. The World Happiness Report ranks countries according to their happiness index. Yale University’s Psych 157: Psychology and the Good Life Course is considered the Ivy League University’s most popular class ever with 255,000 enrollees.
It is not only what is happening in the world, however, that can make us less joyful. Lifestyle shifts are another factor, and as you point out, social media is one of them.
The World Happiness Report 2019 notes that “over the past decade, the amount of time adolescents spend on screen activities—gaming, social media, texting, and time online—has steadily increased, accelerating after 2012 after the majority of Americans owned smart phones.” And the shift from face-to-face activities to online interactions, may have an effect on one’s wellbeing.
In an article “How to Be Happy in the Age of Instagram” in Gen T, Asia Tatler, Melissa Twig notes that “social media has created a world in which everyone’s lives seem perfect—apart from ours. Pick your poison. Whether it is the school friend who is seemingly never not on holiday, a university mate with a home out of a Nora Ephron film, an ex-colleague who can’t stop winning prestigious awards, or an acquaintance with two cherub-like babies, someone on social media is going to make you doubt yourself.”
The crux of the matter is that “we compare our inner, flawed messy lives to the photoshopped exterior lives of the people we follow on social media.” Ethan Kross, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, who studies the impact of Facebook on our well- being, adds that “we are constantly bombarded by photo-shopped lives and that exerts a toll on us the likes of which we have never experienced in the history of our species. And that is not particularly pleasant.”
Jamie Chiu, a Hong Kong-based clinical psychologist, observes that social media can also cause envy for ourselves. Most of us create glossy online lives for ourselves that bear only a passing resemblance to the reality of our existence.
“Envy of your own, curated online life is a very modern, widespread phenomenon,” Chiu said. “It’s important to remember how easily the brain is tricked. So even if you know full well that a photo album you shared doesn’t show the full truth of that particular holiday or period of your life, look back at it a few months later and your brain will be fooled into thinking that it is true.”
But can we be happy in an age of Instagram and digitally curated lives? Here are some things we can do:
- Be mindful of the fact that we aren’t being shown an authentic version of one’s life and this should not affect us.
- Pick up your phone less, but do not banish it altogether. Psychologists believe that anyone spending more than four hours a day on social media has an addiction and the World Health Organization has classified it as a mental disorder, as people consume social media instead of studying, sleeping, or working.
- Monitor how you feel when you log in, Chiu said. “If you’re feeling low then do something else, but if you’re in a good mood, set a timer and go online for 30 minutes.”
- Plan how to spend your leisure time—coffee with friends, a bucket-list trip, cooking classes, joining a social group, visiting relatives—so you spend a meaningful time in the real—and not virtual—world.
PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier association for senior professionals around the world. Millie Dizon, the senior vice president for Marketing and Communications of SM, is the former local chairman
We are devoting a special column each month to answer the reader’s questions about public relations. Please send your comments and questions to askipraphil@gmail.com.
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