mini: stop comparing yourself on social media

welcome to the mental health minis series! every other monday, we will feature a five-minute mini-episode with content from a past she persisted episode. this week’s guest is dr. emily weinstein– a psychologist, author, educator, parent, and longtime tech researcher who co-founded the center for digital thriving at harvard graduate school of education.

in this mini-episode, you'll learn the psychology behind some of the most dangerous aspects of social media, such as cognitive distortions, comparisons, and more! 

to listen to the full episode, click ⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠!

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Happy Monday and welcome to yourMental Health Mini.
This week's guest is Doctor Emily Weinstein, and we are
discussing the psychology behindsome of the most dangerous
aspects of social media, such ascognitive distortions,
comparisons, and more. We show up to whatever
technologies we're using with all of our strengths and
vulnerabilities. There are things that are really
hard about phones and there are things that are hard for whole
groups of people, and there are things that are hard for many,

(00:21):
if not all of us around the way technologies are designed.
There are some really specific design features of technology
that can amplify the experience because you literally can see
like, oh, this message was opened and the person read it
and they haven't responded. That can just pull you into this
kind of anxious thinking spiral.Like, you see that someone's

(00:41):
read your message and they haven't responded and you're
like, should I not have said that?
Are they mad at me? Was that not funny?
Like, am I an idiot? Whatever.
You're kind of like your own brand of the anxious thinking
spiral looks like. And actually when you listen to
what people describe, you're like, oh, this is actually, this
is really familiar for most people, I think, who have a

(01:03):
psych background in that it sounds a lot like familiar
cognitive distortions, like thatwhole process of going like, oh,
they didn't respond. They must be mad at me.
They must come in. That is a pretty classic example
or version of mind reading, which is a cognitive distortion
that is super well studied and widely discussed, where we just
think we know what someone else is thinking about us.

(01:23):
We assume that it's bad. We give it sort of a whole
negative spin. And well, tech did not create
these sorts of distortions. One of the things that we hear
when we really listen to teens is that there are a lot of ways
that tech is designed that make social media in particular so
ripe for these kinds of distortions.

(01:44):
And when we start talking about them, I think that takes some of
the power out of them. But also connecting the dots to,
oh, like this sounds like a cognitive distortion.
And it is helpful if we can namethem and it is helpful if we can
acknowledge them and you have language to talk about them.
And someone else might be havingthose same experiences or they
might not. And so creating enough space for

(02:04):
that in our conversations, whichwe do with so many other parts
of teens lives, but for some reason not consistently with
tech. I think tech is also just so
obviously designed to optimize for our attention.
So we're living in an attention economy, not an agency economy,
not a well-being economy. So the tech companies are right,
their entire revenue model is based off of being able to

(02:27):
capture and hold and retain our attention, keep us scrolling or
coming back for more logging in every day.
And so we actually have this design pull that can make it
really hard for us to act in ourown best interests in some of
these moments. And one of the things I've been
really interested in is I think when we look across the sort of
social Media Research, one of the things that feels to me like

(02:50):
a fairly clear sort of finding is around social comparison.
And specifically when we do the sort of upward comparisons that
make us feel like that person, everyone is better than me and
social media is really right. It's ripe for that.
In a lot of ways. It can feel like there's so
much, I mean, there is a lot of doom and gloom, absolutely.
Like doom scrolling content. And there is a lot of content

(03:13):
that can evoke comparison. So you have this sort of almost
like this emotional whiplash of going from this really
upsetting, disturbing content that makes you feel really sad
to this content that makes you feel sort of potentially sad in
another way. And a couple of really
interesting things about comparison, I think are worth us
just acknowledging and knowing. So 1, is that just

(03:36):
dispositionally, some of us are more inclined to comparison than
others, right? So you might, I might be someone
who just tends to compare myselfmore than you are.
Also developmentally, there are periods and adolescence is one
of them when we're sort of more inclined in that direction.
Like we're, we're doing more comparisons as we're figuring
out who we are and how we fit into the social world.
So we're kind of more vulnerableto doing that sort of thinking

(03:59):
anyway. Transitions can also be another
time when we get more vulnerableto comparisons because we're
sort of assessing so much new information.
And the transition to college isa huge transition.
So in a lot of ways, I actually think that the transition to
college is a moment when we should absolutely expect that
we're going to be more vulnerable to go into that sort

(04:20):
of comparison quicksand trap where we start feeling like a
like everyone's happier than me or everyone's having better
lives, or I'm doing this wrong. I'm doing this transition wrong.
And social media can give us what feels like a lot of data to
support that evidence, but of course, it's completely flawed
data. So I think being able to also
just know that. And for me, it means like

(04:41):
knowing when I am in a period for myself, when I'm just a
little more vulnerable for whatever reason to the kinds of
comparisons that social media isgoing to enable.
And sometimes that might be LinkedIn and sometimes it might
be Instagram, right? And so one of the kind of areas
of mindfulness that I think can really serve us well is tuning
into for ourselves, A, noticing when we're going down that sort

(05:05):
of comparison trap, but B, starting to notice, oh, I'm like
in a period where I am just, I am doing more of that kind of
thinking on this particular platform.
And I need to know that and I need to be a little more
intentional. I need to maybe like not do that
right before bed when I'm tired.So I'm already more inclined to.
Yeah, that. Kind of more vulnerable way of

(05:25):
thinking or whatever it is. And it doesn't mean that you
never turn to your phone in those moments.
But if you you find that you need a mindless distraction,
maybe it's like the New York Times game app instead of your
LinkedIn feed. If you enjoyed this mental
health mini, you can listen to the full episode.
It is episode 218 featuring Doctor Emily Weinstein.

(05:46):
A link to the full episode is inthe show notes.
And as always, make sure to leave a review, subscribe, share
with a friend or family member and follow at Sheep Resisted
Podcast. Thanks for listening.