Summary: New research indicates a strong link between high social media use and psychiatric disorders involving delusions, such as narcissism and body dysmorphia. Conditions like narcissistic personality disorder, anorexia, and body dysmorphic disorder thrive on social platforms, allowing users to build and maintain distorted self-perceptions without real-world checks.
The study highlights how virtual environments enable users to escape social scrutiny, intensifying delusional self-images and potentially exacerbating existing mental health issues. Researchers emphasize that social media isn’t inherently harmful, but immersive virtual environments coupled with real-life isolation can significantly amplify unhealthy mental states.
Key Facts:
- Delusional Disorders: High social media use strongly correlates with disorders such as narcissistic personality disorder, body dysmorphic disorder, erotomania, and anorexia.
- Self-Presentation Issue: Social media allows users to maintain unrealistic and self-enhancing identities without reality-based scrutiny.
- Possible Solutions: Emerging immersive technologies like eye-contact interfaces, 3D interactions, and avatars may help mitigate harmful psychological effects.
Source: Simon Fraser University
A new study from Simon Fraser University researchers has found a close link between high levels of social media use and psychiatric disorders that involve delusions, such as narcissism and body dysmorphic disorder.
According to the recently published study in BMC Psychiatry – a systematic review of all available academic literature including scrutiny of over 2,500 publications on social media use and psychiatric disorders – forms of delusions were by far the most prevalent type of psychiatric disorders related to high social media use.
These disorders include narcissistic personality disorder (delusions of superiority), erotomania (delusions that someone famous loves you), body dysmorphic disorder (delusions of flaws in some part of one’s body) and anorexia (delusions about body size).
“Social media is creating conditions where delusions can more easily be generated and sustained due to the presence of platforms and apps that cater to the disorder’s causes, plus the absence of effective reality-checking,” says Bernard Crespi, a professor of biological sciences and Canada Research Chair in Evolutionary Genetics and Psychology at SFU.
“This research has important implications for the causes and symptoms of mental illnesses, and how they can be exacerbated by online social platforms.”
According to the authors, social media itself isn’t inherently problematic, but the virtual worlds – coupled with social isolation in “real life” – create environments where people can maintain a delusional sense of self identity without scrutiny.
While social media can have positive benefits through its ability to create communities and help people feel more togetherness, Crespi and his co-author Nancy Yang argue that higher-risk individuals are often negatively impacted by high social media use.
They also point out that the features of many popular apps and platforms sustain and exacerbate mental and physical delusions, by enabling self-presentation in self-promoting but inaccurate ways.
The profound difference between online and in-person social interactions – where people are more likely to have their delusions kept in check by physical and emotional reality – exacerbate deviations from mental well-being, he adds.
The study concludes that people with disorders involving high levels of delusionality would benefit from reducing their social media use. It also calls for more research to be done on the specific features of social media that encourage delusions and look for ways to make online social interactions more grounded and real life-like.
To achieve this, the researchers cite the potential of eye-contact technology, 3D perspectives, avatars and other immersive technologies.
About this psychology and delusional disorder research news
Author: Matt Kieltyka
Source: Simon Fraser University
Contact: Matt Kieltyka – Simon Fraser University
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
Original Research: Open access.
“I tweet, therefore I am: a systematic review on social media use and disorders of the social brain” by Bernard Crespi et al. BMC Psychiatry
Abstract
I tweet, therefore I am: a systematic review on social media use and disorders of the social brain
With rapid technological advances, social media has become an everyday form of human social interactions. For the first time in evolutionary history, people can now interact in virtual spaces where temporal, spatial, and embodied cues are decoupled from one another.
What implications do these recent changes have for socio-cognitive phenotypes and mental disorders?
We have conducted a systematic review on the relationships between social media use and mental disorders involving the social brain.
The main findings indicate evidence of increased social media usage in individuals with psychotic spectrum phenotypes and especially among individuals with disorders characterized by alterations in the basic self, most notably narcissism, body dysmorphism, and eating disorders.
These findings can be understood in the context of a new conceptual model, referred to here as ‘Delusion Amplification by Social Media’, whereby this suite of disorders and symptoms centrally involves forms of mentalistic delusions, linked with altered perception and perpetuation of distorted manifestations of the self, that are enabled and exacerbated by social media.
In particular, an underdeveloped and incoherent sense of self, in conjunction with ‘real life’ social isolation that inhibits identify formation and facilitates virtual social interactions, may lead to use of social media to generate and maintain a more or less delusional sense of self identity.
The delusions involved may be mental (as in narcissism and erotomania), or somatic (as in body dysmorphic disorder and eating disorders, encompassing either the entire body or specific body parts).
In each case, the virtual nature of social media facilitates the delusionality because the self is defined and bolstered in this highly mentalistic environment, where real-life exposure of the delusion can be largely avoided.
Current evidence also suggests that increased social media usage, via its disembodied and isolative nature, may be associated with psychotic spectrum phenotypes, especially delusionality, by the decoupling of inter and intra-corporeal cues integral to shared reality testing, leading to the blurring of self-other boundaries.
