Social Media — Your Main Course or Dessert?

Watershed Counseling Therapist Russ Schulte recently contributed an article to Mississippi Matters about the role of Social Media in our lives:

Social media is a good thing. It’s like a nice dessert that’s meant to be enjoyed at the end of a nourishing meal. But it’s not meant to be the main course.

Unfortunately, our “digital” social media desserts are often replacing life’s main course of “non-digital” human interaction. Solid research is now showing that the result is malnourished children and adults. Author Alice G. Walton on a Forbes blog overviews six studies that show how social media is negatively effecting mental health.

Social media isn’t innately bad, but it is when it exceeds healthy limits.

The likelihood for such misuse or abuse is enormous and growing. We need to take it seriously. After all, we are talking about our mental health, both short-term and long-term. We sometimes think of “social media” as whatever is happening on the screen of our mobile phone or computer. But that’s far too fuzzy. So what really is social media and what isn’t it?

Click here to continue reading on Mississippi Matters.