Social Media and Its Impact on Suicide

[Chupacabra 44]

As a life long student of human behavior, I'm trying to better understand if social media is a potentially signicant catalyst for my viewing the quantity of relatively younger people on this forum. Personally, I'm a middle aged dude, who is extremely thin skined and sensitive (if you are versed in astrology, my Moon is in Scorpio), and I poses enough self awareness to fully understand that if I were younger and on social media today that it would just "eat me alive".

Please consider my outline below, if you so chose to respond. I hope you do respond!

1) How much time per day did you spend on social media before having possible suicidal thoughts?
2) Since developing these suicidal thoughs are you spending roughly the same amount of time on social media?
3) When departing from your sessions on social media, do you tend to feel better, worse, or the same about yourself?
4) Have you ever taken a prolonged break from social media intentionally to see if it might make you feel better about yourself and about life? Did this break help?

Thanks for reading though this and hopefully you're motivated to respond. Tell me what ever you think, but you can use my four questions as a guide.

Thanks.

 

[Emily_Numb]

Thankfully I did most of my growing up before social media being born in the early 1980's. To be honest I think anyone who's old enough to be in that same bracket, Were extremely fortunate.

I used to use all social media A LOT as I got older but I've since deleted twitter as it's just beyond toxic, facebook I still have but rarely log in and this past few weeks I have disabled my IG.

I think what few positives there are about social media, the pressure to post and have an IG-worthy life, is way more damaging. I think the most damaging thing about social media by far, is the ability to edit photos. Young girls as especially susceptible to that. It's absolutely a catalyst for low self esteem, body dysmorphia and anxiety issues.

Im a grown woman and it impacts me seeing these perfect skinned, skinny women on there and although I know in my head it's edited photos, I still compare myself to them. Crazy I know. I can only imagine the conflict it causes younger, more insecure people.

I feel marginally better not being on Social media at the moment. It's very difficult not to get sucked back in though as you end up feeling out of the loop. Im hoping to take a prolonged break of a month or so as I am not in a good place right now and social media only makes me feel worse when I'm feeling low.

 

[RC90]

I've stopped using social media a few months back. As I found it made me more depressed to see others fake happiness. People are always smiling and taking selfies, but most of them are empty as us. The more users like their photos or comments it's like a drug to them. There's actually a new documentary on Netflix talking about that.

 

[death137]

Social media is the reason why I became permanently suicidal. Because of friends advice I joined the social media world in 2015 (18 old then). It was all over from there. I started to be very depressed about my height

To your questions:

1. On average I would say 4-5 hours per day.

2. I would say I'm spending more time now but in informative sites like suicide sites and history/my country sites.

3. Back then I felt better but now I feel the same about myself because I already decided to suicide and social media can't make it anymore worse.

4. I intentionally deleted social media (Facebook and a couple texting apps) 4 years ago and although it helped a little the damage was already done.

Nowadays I only use this site, reddit and telegram.

 

[woxihuanni]

Social media is the reason why I became permanently suicidal. Because of friends advice I joined the social media world in 2015 (18 old then). It was all over from there. I started to be very depressed about my height

To your questions:

1. On average I would say 4-5 hours per day.

2. I would say I'm spending more time now but in informative sites like suicide sites and history/my country sites.

3. Back then I felt better but now I feel the same about myself because I already decided to suicide and social media can't make it anymore worse.

4. I intentionally deleted social media (Facebook and a couple texting apps) 4 years ago and although it helped a little the damage was already done.

Nowadays I only use this site, reddit and telegram.

For your health, I suggest you feed solely on radioactive waste instead of using reddit.

 

[BipolarGuy]

Yes social media is influencing my behaviour because before Facebook was invented I didn't know that it was possible for a human being to be so thick and still be living.
This discovery has disappointed me greatly.

 

[death137]

For your health, I suggest you feed solely on radioactive waste instead of using reddit.

I understand there are many bad subs there but I mostly spend on my country subs which are informative.

 

[TheSkyIsBlue]

I'm gen z, but I've never used social media that much. I have a Facebook account, but I use only Messenger when I need to talk with someone. For few months I was using ask.fm, but back then I didn't have suicidal thoughts. I deleted it because I felt that I was starting to be addicted to it.

 

[deadwithoutmusic]

I don't really use facebook and only ever use messenger to talk to friends. I don't have instagram or twitter as well and rarely go on reddit (maybe half an hour on reddit every couple of days). I'm on discord quite a bit talking to friends but I'm not sure if you would call that social media.

Maybe an hour or so all up messaging people on messenger a day and that's about it.

I don't think I spend any more or less time on social media after developing suicidal thoughts. Maybe I'm on discord more trying to find friends to play games with me to distract myself.

I obviously feel worse now just in general but I don't think social media has any impact on me at all really.

I have never really taken a break from social media but have done things like delete the facebook app from my phone just leaving messenger to talk to people and deleting reddit from my phone for spending too much time on it during undergrad. I'm probably not the right person to ask for this but I'm in my mid 20s for reference.

 

[aBLEACHyindividual]

1) How much time per day did you spend on social media before having possible suicidal thoughts?
usually within minutes of opening it (3-10 minutes)

2) Since developing these suicidal thoughs are you spending roughly the same amount of time on social media?
yes.

3) When departing from your sessions on social media, do you tend to feel better, worse, or the same about yourself?
same, feel like the same shit but I don't really depart from social media until Im sleeping. I spend about 13-14 or more hours on it.

4) Have you ever taken a prolonged break from social media intentionally to see if it might make you feel better about yourself and about life? Did this break help?

not intentionally but when I was on a cruise For vacation with family for about 5 days I couldn't use social media So I felt maybe a little better but not by much.

 

[TimeToBiteTheDust]

Hi Chupacabra 44


1) How much time per day did you spend on social media before having possible suicidal thoughts?

Mmm like 2 or 3 hours per day.

2) Since developing these suicidal thoughs are you spending roughly the same amount of time on social media?

Only Fb everyday (depressive groups with people complaining about being alive)

3) When departing from your sessions on social media, do you tend to feel better, worse, or the same about yourself?

I felt better when I stopped using Instagram.

4) Have you ever taken a prolonged break from social media intentionally to see if it might make you feel better about yourself and about life? Did this break help?

I did this with Fb some years ago because I couldn't concentrate to study. But now I'm not motivated to study as before.

 

[Chupacabra 44]

Thank you very much for the responses; it helps me understand.

What impresses me about this board is how much self awareness most of you have. I just started obtaining self awareness in my mid forties, and it's still a huge work in progress.

I try to think back to my twenty year old self to assess if I could have figured out how toxic social media would have been for me personally. In particular, just because of my own personality make up. I know social media would have really messed me up had it been around in my youth, but I was so clueless and lacked any level of self awareness. I suspect that I would lack the tools to realize the source of any added disfunction social media would have certainly caused me.

Bottom line, I am grateful that stuff wasn't around in my youth.