Facebook and Health

Facebook presently is being scrutinized due to its role in political hacking.  However, Facebook can threaten not only the health of our collective democracy, but the health of our individual citizens.

Physical health is detrimentally impacted when we are immobile in front of our Facebook page.  Prolonged sitting can contribute to ailments, such as hypertension, high blood sugar, and obesity.  On the other hand, using one of the now popular elevated desks that enables us to view Facebook while standing is only a partial solution.  Research has shown that prolonged standing increases our risk for lower extremity blood clots, back and foot pain, and high LDL cholesterol.  Our bodies are not designed to be in any static position for long.  Our bodies are meant to be in dynamic motion, stillness alternating with movement.  Even during sleep, almost all of us instinctively manage to strike the proper balance between lying still and shifting around in bed.

Facebook also influences our mental health.  Very often, a primary viewing motivation is to check-up on our friends and other acquaintances in order to keep score.  Are they faring better than I am?  Why don't I have what they have? What are they doing?  How can they afford a  new car?  Mine already is too old, 5 years!  They are going to Paris, again.  Last year they went to Rome.  I only had one week at a nearby lake.     

The aforementioned use of Facebook reinforces in us an outer-directed locus of control.  Rather than confidently choose our own goals and priorities, we let reference groups or "popular people" set the agendas.  When Facebook posts invade our consciousness too often, we selectively compare ourselves to the best features of our friends' postings.  We think about every single thing that comprises each individual friend's posted life.  Then we aggregate the best features of our composite friends' lives, as they have posted them, and find ourselves lacking.  

A Facebook, outer-directed life does not only incite your jealous longing for what you believe your friends have.  Equally destructive is that it can cause you to ignore or minimize that which you do have.  You focus too much on the "wonderful" things posted, and too little on the costs of those wonderful things.  For instance, people with the most expensive material goods and grandest vacations must pay for them.  Perhaps they must work incessantly, and give short-shrift to family.  Perhaps they use their expensive material goods and grand vacations to fill emotional voids.  

Of course, Facebook need not be all bad.  You can use it in reasonable ways that do not compromise your physical or mental health.  Friends' postings can help you find ways to enrich your life that do not depend on competing with them, that enable you to maintain an internal locus of control, and that allow you to be conscious of what you have, not just what you don't have.

Be mindful that every minute spent on Facebook also is a minute lost in alternative activities.  Discipline your Facebook use.  Know when to start, and when to stop.  Have alternative activities readily available.  If you take control of Facebook, you can make the site work for you, and not against you.