Lords of Misrule, Social Media Addict

 The year 2020 will go down in the record books as one of the worst in global history. Nearly 2 million people died from coronavirus, tens of millions more lost their jobs and countless others faced unprecedented disruption to their daily lives.

Mammon
George Frederick Watts (1817-1904)
Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

However, it was a very profitable year for the elite few financial executives betting on the health of the global economy. The world's top 15 hedge fund managers collectively made $23.2bn (£16.9bn) last year...

The best performing hedge fund manager, Chase Coleman 111, the founder of Tiger Global Management (TGM), made $3bn in performance management fees and gains on his personal investment in the fund, according to a Bloomberg analysis of regulatory filings.

Coleman's personal pay last year was more than the GDP of dozens of countries including the Gambia, Bhutan and Eritrea, according to the International Monetary Fund...

Also on the list is Bill Ackman, the founder and chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management. Ackman, who according to the list made $1.3bn, made billions for his fund by betting that stock markets would collapse early on in the pandemic.

Luke Hilyard, the executive director of the High Pay Centre thinktank, said: "The research shows the extraordinary riches accruing to a tiny number of individuals for speculative financial activities of dubious value to wider society.

"It ought to be completely clear that this is a really terrible way for wealth to be distributed, in the midst of a global pandemic with families losing jobs and homes, businesses going under and public services under immense strain."

(Rupert Neate, The Guardian, 2021)

Wealth inequality can only be dealt with on a global scale and at present governments are extremely reluctant to grasp that particular nettle.

(See Maxwell and the City Bankers, Feb12, 2021, Bankers, Jan 8, 2021 and Dirty Money, Nov 24, 2020)

Social Media Addict

I've recently become aware of how much my social media use has crept up during the pandemic, and how what started as a need to connect with people has shifted into something anxiety-inducing.

Last spring, interacting with people online filled a gap that my friends and family couldn't because they were dealing with their own challenging home situations. So what if I was on my phone late at night, or if it was the first thing I checked in the morning? Or if I felt the need to tweet whether or not I'd be eating a jacket potato for dinner? I had no other social life dammit!..

Anxiety, Head of a Girl
Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725-1805]
Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery [CC BY-NC-ND]

Personally, I've noticed my anxiety levels creeping up over the last two months, whether that's noticing how agitated or unsettled I feel after seeing people arguing on social media, or feeling the effects of the negative energy and language on there. An uptick in trolling on my Instagram account made things worse because I felt I needed to be vigilant all the time in order to catch horrible comments or messages.

This created a deafening amount of noise in my head, especially before going to bed. One night I couldn't get to sleep because I'd been stressing about an exchange I'd seen on Twitter between two other people.

All the warning signs that I needed to radically manage my use of social media were there - worrying, interrupted sleep, apathy around communication with "real" people like my friends and family and feelings of discontent - but at the same time, I didn't feel like it was an option... I fooled myself into thinking that the increased anxiety was due to lockdown three, not being online every minute of the day.

Two things snapped me out of this false reality. The first was last week, when I checked my phone at 10.30am. I then got on with some work. After what felt like AGES I decided to check my phone again. It was 10.37

The second was when I paused a 30-minute yoga session to check my phone, 20 minutes in. I decided for the first time in years that I needed a small break. I decided that I wasn't allowed to check Instagram or Twitter - the two apps I use the most for 40 hours.

It wasn't easy and I panicked plenty of times and thought "what if someone trolls me and I'm not there to pick it up?!...

(Poorna Bell, The i, 2021)

Tweeting about jacket potatoes, checking your phone first thing in the morning, wanting to catch horrible comments or messages, being online every minute of the day, checking your phone every seven minutes. Is it any wonder that you feel anxious? The dangers of using too much social media are also outlined in the article below.

*Last week, two related news items appeared on the same day. First, that young people who are unhappy with their appearance are most likely to develop depression, and second, that 60 per cent of eight-year-olds use messaging apps that are meant for teenagers.

Neither came as a surprise to me. From the time I entered my all-girls secondary school, I've seen countless friends succumb to severe mental health challenges: from depression to bulimia. I don't think it's any coincidence that we came of age as social media boomed, lying about our age as we signed up to Facebook and spending our teenage years desperately updating our profile photo in an attempt to garner strokes of that hallowed "Like" button.

Worryingly the habit has persisted into our twenties. When I speak to friends who have mental health difficulties, they often scroll through Instagram as they chat about those same difficulties, comparing themselves to a filtered, one-sided version of someone else's life (or a size-zero influencer who gets paid more the less she eats). I know these things are harmful now but I didn't as a teenager: why would you know at an age when you think you'll die alone unless you have a boyfriend?

We need to be honest with ourselves that social media is largely unhelpful when you're young and have mental problems. It's fashionable to spout creative rationales of how social media allows for connection and inspiration, citing uplifting quotes on Instagram and body-positive feeds (which instead of featuring normal-sized women, are often just full of skinny girls pictured eating huge burgers).

Deanne Jade, head of the National Centre for Eating Disorders says that the first thing she asks patients to do is switch off their phones and computers so that they can reset the way they think. Why is this so hard for some children and their parents to understand? The first thing I do when I'm feeling low is log out of Instagram or, if I'm stressed close my LinkedIn tab. Social media is a fairground hall of mirrors and when you're too full of emotion to see it's a distorted version of reality, you'll go mad if you stay.

As we exit the pandemic this spring, and children can interact once more in normal social settings, we have to stop making excuses for staying on social media when it's unhelpful. The harsh truth is that parents whose children are suffering from poor mental health need to find a way to get them offline.

(Pravina Rudra, The Times, 2020)