Oversharing

(Image from mobile app daily)

Facebook's rapid growth 10-15 years ago coincided with a rise in teen mental health issues. Young people were bombarded with images about the happy, fulfilling, exciting experiences of their peers; they were reminded how their own lives supposedly paled in comparison.

Depression, anxiety, and the fear of missing out afflicted millions (2019: "there were almost 42 million adolescents between the ages of 10 and 19 in the United States.")

A more recent (but not new) tech tool, location-sharing, has aggravated emotional problems: [bold added]

Location sharing has become such a fixture that many teens say they’d be overlooked socially if they didn’t use it...

Many teens say location sharing can make them self-conscious about where they live and where they go. Some fear being stalked. Yet, by far the biggest cause of anxiety, they say, is knowing when they’re missing out.

The already-acute youth mental-health crisis has worsened since the pandemic.

Teens feel worse knowing immediately that their friends are having fun without them.

Addison [Figel, 16] and other teens say they can shrug it off when they see a photo or video of friends gathered without them, posted after the fact. Witnessing exclusion in real time hits differently.

Your humble blogger has always believed that more information--even information that is fragmented and incomplete--is better than not having it.

But it does require both good judgment--to view the information in context and question what is being left out--and strength of character to withstand actual or perceived slights. Wisdom and character are attributes that take time to develop.

Adolescents' inexperience and powerful emotions make them particularly vulnerable. Perhaps tech can develop solutions--for example, requiring non-family users to opt-in to location sharing upon powering up--to lessen the dark side of social media.