Social Media Anxiety: How Social Media Is Manipulating Our Self Image
231.47 million Americans are on social media. Social media can be a wonderful, amazing tool for us to connect, share our thoughts, and learn from others. However, as social media becomes more integrated into our daily lives, so increases anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses in Americans. Ohio University professor, Dr. Karen Riggs, and Therapist and LCSW, Marisa Floro, express how social media is manipulating our image of self, impacting our interactions with others, and what needs to be done in order to break from our obsession with posting and scrolling in order to use social media as a tool as originally intended.
--- About the Guest ---
Karen E. Riggs, Ph.D., is a professor of media studies in the School of Media Arts & Studies at Ohio University in Athens. She worked as a newspaper journalist for 10 years, starting as a feature writer and later assuming the duties of managing editor at the Vero Beach Press Journal in Florida. She received her doctorate in mass communication at Indiana University in 1994 and joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the Journalism and Mass Communication Department, and was later appointed department chair. In 2001, she joined the faculty of the Ohio University School of Telecommunications (now School of Media Arts & Studies) as school director. She was the first woman to rise to full professor in the school.
Along with numerous journal articles, Riggs has published two scholarly books on media technologies and aging: Mature Audiences: Television in the Lives of Elders (Rutgers University Press: 1997) and Granny at Work: Aging and New Technology on the Job in America (Routledge Press: 2004).
In 2013, she founded the Scripps College of Communication Certificate in Social Media Studies, now one of Ohio University’s largest certificate programs and one of the first such undergraduate programs in the country. As coordinator, Riggs designed and teaches numerous courses in social media, including Content Curation, the first such college class in the nation. She tweets about social media and has almost 10,000 Twitter followers.
Mental Health Stats
Nearly one in five U.S. adults live with any mental illness (46.6 million in 2017 aged 18 or older. 18.9% of all U.S. adults.
The prevalence of any mental illness was higher among women (22.3%) than men (15.1%).
The prevalence of any mental illness was highest among adults reporting two or more races (28.6%), followed by White adults (20.4%). The prevalence of any mental illness was lowest among Asian adults (14.5%).
Young adults aged 18-25 years had the highest prevalence of AMI (25.8%) compared to adults aged 26-49 years (22.2%) and aged 50 and older (13.8%).
--- About American Wellness ---
Produced by WeXL Org, American Wellness dives headfirst into the uncomfortable conversations surrounding mental illness and why Americans feel the way they do. We examine our past, present, and future to find the solutions that could unite and heal us. Together we heal.