Depression and Facebook

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about what it’s like living with depression, and I was overwhelmed by not only the response, but the numerous private messages that complete strangers sent me; from parents who finally understood why they struggled to help their children, to empty nesters who couldn’t find a way to tell their partner of decades that they too battled depression.

It is because of this reaction that I've decided to keep writing about what I see, feel and experience as an Entrepreneur, CEO, Father, Husband and Friend who battles depression every single day. Not every post will be for the masses, but if I can help just one person, then it will be worth it.

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This post is a little more challenging because it is about social media, and given how social media helped spread my first post - and this one - the irony sandwich is almost too big to chew. Now, in full disclosure, this is also not the first time I've written about my concerns with social media, see my post Social Media's "Atomic Age". This is however the first time I am writing about social media from a depressive's point of view.

Listen, I am, by far, not the first person to raise the issue of social media and mental health, but I wanted to try to apply the same type of simplistic understanding I used in my original post to better explain the challenging relationship social media has with mental health.

First, I think it’s important to separate our professional social media channels from personal ones. LinkedIn is a great example of a professional channel, as virtually every post is related to one’s professional life - yes, no cat memes here (though plenty of Dilbert). While I personally don’t like LinkedIn’s new emotional reaction buttons as I feel that can feed into the mental health challenges I’ll be explaining later, it is by far and away a relatively contained and effective medium for distributing knowledge. 

For the purposes of this post, I will be focusing almost exclusively on Facebook, and it’s 2.4 billion users, as I feel that is where the greatest good - and evil - takes place in our digital world. 

As an entrepreneur, I remain in awe of Facebook’s success and wish that all my cash flow reports could look like theirs! The concept of a platform that allows users to speak with who they want, find people long forgotten, choose what news they want to consume and crowdsource information that historically has been hard to come by (how did we find the best plumber in our neighborhood before Facebook?) is, to say the least, amazing. While not the first social network, Facebook is the largest, most powerful and, at is core, a data generating machine. 

Let me also say that I have nothing against using basic profile data to align advertisements with my interest - more golf deals, less spanx - however, as almost everyone knows by now, Facebook’s casual relationship with your data, specifically how they acquire it, mine it and share it, is worthy of all the ongoing scrutiny and enforcement - but that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is to share the Facebook experience from a depressive’s perspective. 

The point of this post is to share the Facebook experience from a depressive’s perspective. 

At the heart of the Facebook user experience is...the user. Self-generated data is the best kind of data. Share a bunch of pictures of your family at the beach, it makes selling you beach vacations that much easier. 

But let’s take a deeper look about data and mental health.

The two main culprits in this equation are what’s posted and how it's posted. Picture after picture is of something special - I mean who takes and posts a picture of them vacuuming? It’s awesome dinners, cool vacations, a night out with friends, your kid in her baseball uniform, the perfectly orchestrated family picture, etc...

How do I know? Because I used to do the same thing. Besides, when you battle depression, your biggest motivation is hiding your depression. I’m not going to show you a picture of me with a bottle of whiskey at 3am, slumped over at my computer desk, fighting back tears. Hell no!

When you battle depression, your biggest motivation is hiding your depression

Instead, I’m going to show you my smiling kids, a silly thing my dog did and an awesome group shot of my friends - and this is where the catch 22 begins for a depressive. We mask our true, dark feelings by projecting tremendous confidence and happiness - so when we do this, we get likes and loves that support the behavior and, more importantly, we see other people’s confidence and happiness (genuine or false) and that triggers depression further, because, "why can't I just snap out of it and be happy like Pat is?"

So what do we do? We post more about how happy and confident we are, and that presses the trigger further, so we get lower, post more...and the beat goes on and on and on. 

Now everyone’s trigger is different, so I’m not saying that everyone who suffers from depression is triggered by other people’s happiness, but at least for me and those who I’ve spoken with - it is a common trigger. I mean who doesn’t want to be happy? It’s like a drug when you're depressed. The more you want it, the harder a sustained happiness is to achieve. 

I mean who doesn’t want to be happy? It’s like a drug when you're depressed.

(Notice I didn’t say anything about “fake news” or political discussions with crazy Uncle Bill - while those are legitimate discussion points when it comes to Facebook - it’s not the point of this post.)

Now here is where the “how it gets posted” portion unfolds. Going back to my example above, the more “happy” things you post, the more the Facebook advertising machine sells your data to advertisers selling “happiness”. So you start seeing advertisements for cruises, baseball camps, hiking gear, etc - all of it makes one think deeper about the happiness you simply are incapable of achieving.

The second part of about the “how” is a core feature of the Facebook model - how to keep a user on Facebook as long as possible. Whether it is infinite scroll (keep swiping down, eventually you’ll find something you like, right?) or the way content is served up based on the profile you’ve created to the outside world on Facebook, you are now caught in a net, like a dolphin in a school of tuna, and struggle to escape. You are bombarded with "happiness", and every post or advertisement pierces your armor just a little more.

Side note on infinite scroll...one of the side effects is that it encourages the user to keep searching and searching and searching...for what, you may never know, but the more you scroll, the more “happiness” you may see, the worse it makes you feel, so you scroll more to find more "happiness"...

I was at a dinner with a client the other week and during our discussion they mentioned one of the biggest challenges advertisers face when working with Facebook - and it surprised me. No, it wasn’t things like cost, ad integrity or even demographic targeting, it was actually the user herself. 

Reverting back to my comments from above, when you continuously post things that are so detached from reality, i.e. a depressive posting pictures from a bike ride or a beach, regardless of if that person continuously fell off the bike or hated the water, you would have created a profile of someone who loves bike riding and beaches. In an attempt to mask your true emotions, you’ve created an entirely new persona that is packaged up and sold over and over again, the ultimate end result being that you’ve created a false identity that is constantly marketed to and incentivized to stay on Facebook - to the complete detriment of your mental health.

A great business model for Facebook, a potentially terrible enabler for a depressive. 

Listen, I’m not saying that everyone should get off Facebook, just like if I were an alcoholic, I wouldn’t tell everybody to stay out of the bar. We all make our own choices, but there are some things we can do if we are the afflicted, and there are things we can better understand if we live with, or care for those who are.

Listen, I’m not saying that everyone should get off Facebook just like if I were an alcoholic I wouldn’t tell everybody to stay out of the bar.

For me, the data scandal of Facebook from last year was merely the final excuse to do what I have wanted to do since I joined, which is to completely delete my account. If you battle depression, perhaps removing potential triggers, like Facebook, can help you move slightly closer to balance - I know it has helped me.