I'm fat.

Wow, I'm fat.

She's only nineteen years old, what am I doing with my life?

Hey! Two likes! Nice.

Do I like this photo?

Does she really need more likes?

I hope I'm going to be invited to the wedding.

One more like, nice!

Welcome to the internal monologue of a typical social media scroll.

A monologue that so many of us have every day,

but we don't think about it, we don't talk about it.

In fact, many of us can't even recognize it happening.

I'm Bailey Parnell,

and I will discuss the unintended consequences

social media is having on your mental health.

I will show you what's stressing you out every day,

what it's doing to you,

and how you can craft a better experience for yourself online.

Just over a year ago,

my sister and I took a four-day vacation to Jasper, Alberta.

This was the first no-work vacation I had taken in four years.

On this vacation, I was going dark.

I was turning on airplane mode, no email and no social media.

The first day there,

I was still experiencing phantom vibration syndrome.

That's where you think your phone went off,

and you check and it didn't.

I was checking incessantly.

I was distracted in conversation.

I was seeing these gorgeous sights Jasper had to offer,

and my first reaction was to take out my phone

and post it on social.

But of course it wasn't there.

The second day was a little bit easier.

You might be thinking I'm ridiculous,

but I hadn't been completely disconnected in over four years.

This was practically a new experience again.

It wasn't until the fourth day I was there

that I was finally comfortable without my phone.

I was sitting with my sister, literally on the side of this mountain,

when I started thinking to myself:

"What is social media doing to me?

What is it doing to my peers?"

That was only four days, and it was anxiety-inducing,

it was stressful and it resulted in withdrawals.

That's when I started to ask questions

and have since started my master's research into this subject.

I've worked in social marketing primarily in higher education

for most of my career.

That means I work with a lot of 18- to 24-year-olds,

which also happens to be

the most active demographic on social media.

The other thing you need to know about me

is that I'm young enough to have grown up with social media,

but just old enough to be able to critically engage with it

in a way that twelve-year-old me probably couldn't.

My life is social media: personally, professionally and academically.

If it was doing this to me, what was it doing to everyone else?

I immediately found out I wasn't alone.

The center for collegiate mental health found that the top three diagnoses

on University campuses are anxiety, depression and stress.

Numerous studies from the US, Canada, the UK, you name it,

have linked this high social media use

with these high levels of anxiety and depression.

But the scary thing is that high social media use

is almost everyone I know:

my friends, my family, my colleagues.

90% of 18- to 29-year-olds are on social media.

We spend on average two hours a day there.

We don't even eat for two hours a day.

70% of the Canadian population is on social media.

Our voter turnout isn't even 70%.

Anything we do this often is worthy of critical observation.

Anything we spend this much time doing has lasting effects on us.

So let me introduce you

to four of the most common stressors on social media,

that if go unchecked

have potential to become full-blown mental health issues,

and this is by no means an exhaustive list.

Number one: the Highlight Reel.

Just like in sports,

the highlight reel is a collection of the best and brightest moments.

Social media is our personal highlight reel.

It's where we put up our wins, or when we look great,

or when we are out with friends and family.

But we struggle with insecurity

because we compare our behind-the-scenes

with everyone else's highlight reels.

We are constantly comparing ourselves to others.

Yes, this was happening before social media,

with TV and celebrity,

but now it's happening all the time, and it's directly linked to you.

A perfect example I came across in preparation for this talk

is my friend on vacation: 'brb, nap ...'

(Laughter)

'Wait, why can't I afford a vacation?

Why am I just sitting here in my PJ's watching Netflix?

I want to be on a beach.'

Here's the thing, I know her very well.

I knew this was out of the ordinary for her.

I knew she was typically drowning in schoolwork.

But we think, 'Who wants to see that?'

The highlights are what people want to see.

In fact, when your highlights do well,

you encounter the second stressor on social media.

Which is number two: Social Currency.

Just like the dollar, a currency is literally something we use

to attribute value to a good or service.

In social media, these likes, the comments, the shares

have become this form of social currency by which we attribute value to something.

In marketing, we call it the 'Economy of Attention'.

Everything is competing for your attention,

and when you give something a like or a piece of that finite attention,

it becomes a recorded transaction attributing value.

Which is great if you are selling albums or clothing.

The problem is that in our social media,

[WE are the product.]

We are letting others attribute value to us.

You know someone or are someone that has taken down a photo

because it didn't take as many likes as you thought it would.

I'll admit, I've been right there with you.

We took our product off the shelf because it wasn't selling fast enough.

This is changing our sense of identity.

We are tying up our self-worth of what others think about us

and then we are quantifying it for everyone to see.

And we are obsessed.

We have to get that selfie just right, and we will take 300 photos to make sure.

Then we will wait for the perfect time to post.

We are so obsessed

we have biological responses when we can't participate.

Which leads me to the third stressor on social media.

Number three: F.O.M.O.

It's a light phrase we've all thrown around.

F.O.M.O., or the 'fear of missing out', is an actual social anxiety

from the fear that you are missing a potential connection,

event, or opportunity.

A collection of Canadian Universities found that 7/10 students

said they would get rid of their social networking accounts

if it were not for fear of being left 'out of the loop'.

Out of curiosity, how many people here

have, or have considered deactivating your social.

That's almost everyone.

That F.O.M.O. you feel, the highlight reels, the social currency,

those are all results of a relatively 'normal' social media experience.

But what if going on social every day was a terrifying experience?

Where you not just question your self-worth

but you question your safety?

Perhaps the worst stressor on social media is number four:

Online Harassment.

40% of online adults have experienced online harassment.

73% have witnessed it.

The unfortunate reality is that it is much worse and much more likely

if you are a woman, LGBTQ, a person of color, muslim -

I think you get the point.

The problem is that in the news we are seeing these big stories:

The 18-year-old Tyler Clementi,

who took his life after his roommate secretly filmed him kissing another guy

and outed him on Twitter.

We see women like Anita Sarkeesian being close to shamed of the internet

and sent death and rape threats for sharing their feminism.

We see these stories once it is too late.

What about the everyday online harassment?

What about that ugly snapchat you sent your friend

with the intention of it being private, and now it is up on Facebook?

'And so? It's just one photo, it's funny.'

'Just one mean comment, not a big deal.'

But when these micro moments happen over and over again, over time,

that's when we have a macro problem.

We have to recognize these everyday instances as well.

Because if they go unchecked and the effects unnoticed,

we are going to have many more Tyler Clementis.

The effects are not always easy to recognise.

How many of you have noticed the notifications at the top of my screen?

How many of you, like me, are bothered that they're not checked?

Ok, let me check them for you. (Sighs) Okay!

Just one small example of what this can do to you.

Maybe you simply cannot focus because your notifications

are going off the handle, and you need to check.

That need, eventually becomes addiction.

Regarding social media, we are already experiencing

impairment similar to substance dependencies.

With every like, you get a shot of that feel-good chemical, dopamine.

You gain more of that social currency. So what do we do to feel good?

We check likes - just one more time.

We post - just one more time.

We are anxious if we do not have access.

Doesn't that sound like every drug you have ever heard of?

Yeah!

So when that grows,

when your social media use goes unconfronted overtime,

that's when we see the rising levels of anxiety and depression:

the F.O.M.O. the distractions, the highlight reels, the comparisons;

It's a lot, and it's all the time!

The Canadian Association of Mental Health

found that grades 7-12 students who spent two hours a day on social media

reported higher levels of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

For those of you doing the math, that's as young as twelve years old.

Here is the thing, I like social media. I do, I love it.

Hearing what I've said today

might make you think I want you to get off of it.

But I don't.

I don't think it's going anywhere,

so I'm not going to waste my time

telling you to spend less time on social media.

Frankly, I don't think absence is an option anymore.

But that does not mean you can't practice 'safe social'.

Everything I have talked about today

has nothing and everything to do with social media.

I mean, social media is neither good nor bad.

It's just the most recent tool we use to do what we have always done:

tell stories and communicate with each other.

You wouldn't blame Samsung Television for a bad TV show.

Twitter doesn't make people write hateful posts.

When we talk about this dark side of social media,

what we really talk about is the dark side of people.

That dark side that makes harassers harass;

that insecurity that makes you take down a photo

you were excited to share.

That dark side that looks at a picture of a happy family and wonders

why yours does not look like that.

So as parents, as educators, as friends, as bosses

this dark side is what we need to focus on.

We need preventative strategies and coping strategies

so that when you have your low days - because you will -

when you're questioning your self-worth, you never get as low as Tyler Clementi -

and the many others like him.

'OK, Bailey, how do you find social media wellness?'

Here's the good news:

Recognising a problem is the first step to fixing it.

So hearing this talk is just that, step one: recognise the problem.

You know the power of suggestion,

when someone tells you about something and you start seeing it everywhere.