A-Z of mental health
Information and advice on a huge range of mental health topics
I'll be there for you
Posted Friday 29 January 2010
Obviously I am always fully professional and look at the number of comments on Mind’s blogs from various contributors as a sign of what interests people and not as a popularity contest. Yeah right! After careful consideration, I am just going to review the antics of cute cats.
Why should it matter? Why do we need to know how many followers we - or others - have on Twitter or friends on Facebook?
A BBC article informs us that the average number of friends is 150 and that the ideal number of close friends is between six and 12. Your popularity at school is positively linked to your wage level in later life – excepting, perhaps, those people who are unpopular at school and then go on to pen/produce high school misfit movies. To add to the pressure there is now the necessity of having the right number of friends on Facebook (it’s 302) to have the most appeal to others.
It is widely accepted that having social support networks can reduce your likelihood of developing mental health problems or help promote recovery when you do experience mental distress. So stop taking the time to count and start taking the time to follow the advice of Raymond Tallis and cherish those precious friendships.
Bridget O'Connell, Head of Information
6 Comments
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http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=288947079898&ref=nf
I have arranged a protest/demonstration in Manchester on Valentine's Day, 14th February, 2010.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=288947079898&ref=nf
My son took his life and was terribly let down by the mental health system and after I found that Ian was not alone many have been let down and I would like to raise awareness of this.
I would be glad of your support
kind regards
sheila rothwell -
All depends on the quality of your friends, followers or other list of people. I gave my Facebook the boot recently when I realised I was looking out at a sea of sociability I wasn't part of anymore, and wasn't able to be part of. My social-life had slowly virtualised, and then FB had become a distorting lens for my bipolar-paranoias - I became more of a side-show than an actual person with Bad-Stuff-Going-On.
That and people made the assumption that if they saw me being active there I must be fine really so they were less inclined to pick up the phone or ask if I was doing ok. But when you :) instead of smiling and LOL instead of actually laughing, well, let's just say I found it somewhat isolating and not at all helpful. Since kicking it I've found who my friends are in this concrete reality and who saw me as little more than online activity.
But that's just my personal trip, I don't blame Facebook for being what it is, there's nothing inherent to it for good or ill, and I still mess around on Twitter, but I find Twitter more useful as a sandbox because I'm more able to interact with people I *don't* know. Each to what suits them.
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Statistics, damn statistics. A lot of human needs on various levels go back to hunter gather groups. I understood that about a 30 'familial' group of individual was the ideal number to provide the complex social and emotion needs of individuals. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs does not specify numbers as such for 'abundance functioning' just the presence of others, i.e. absence of loneliness. So therefore, people might be pressurised by statistics and competition to fulfil their numbers quota but still be lonely. In fact this pressure might be a 'deficiency functioning' [Maslow again] aspect caused by loneliness, or the absence of 'relatives'. This connects with David Riesman's sociological study of modern conformity ''The Lonely Crowd'' but suggests the existance of 'inner directed' individuals who may be harassed by the conformists but in fact may be in better mental health.
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Although I am a facebook user, i do feel that it contributes hugely to anxiety and lack of confidence -particularly amongst young users. As you rightly say in your blog above, we are forgetting to cherish our close friendships that really, truly matter, and instead concentrating on portraying an 'image' and interacting with people on a very superficial level. I am 30 years old, have a very good career in charge of over 30 members of staff and generally am lucky enough to be a relatively confident person with some very good close friends, yet i still find myself being surprisingly deeply affected by the little feelings of rejection when someone doesn't respond to me or when i post photographs and nobody is interested enough to comment or whatever. It's extraordinary how much of an impact it can have on me when i don't find a nice little red 'notification' waiting for me or whatever. Or if i see someone else who appears to have the 'perfect' life it can raise feelings of inadequacy or insecurity or envy. And if it affects me as a mature, relatively confident individual, can you imagine what it does to the mind of an insecure teenager desperate to be popular and to portray a 'cool' image? It must be breeding a generation of paranoid people full of feelings of inadequacy. Facebook and twitter may be good for spreading awareness of issues - and it may be somewhat pathetic that i can't just accept facebook as a fun, social tool - but i fear that i am not alone in my 'secret' feelings and that actually, it may have a seriously detremental effect on a lot of individuals - particularly teenagers. I feel very strongly that you are absolutely spot on when you say "So stop taking the time to count and start taking the time to cherish those precious friendships". That's the message we need to get out there...
(it is also worth noting that the reason i found this article was because I clicked on the link from my facebook news feed...Sigh....) -
I must say the only time I have used Facebook is to spy on my teenage sons (both know I spy on them) and we all laugh about it. I don't enjoy tapping into a computor to 'communicate' with people nor do I like talking on the phone, I must be old fashioned, but give me a good chin wag - face to face anytime!!
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''I suffer from Mental Illness, I am a loner, who dosn't socialise with people that much, cos i just need to regain my health, i used to be a former crack addict, high on drugs, i used to cause strong violence, because my life has been affected by trouble, i just need mental help...
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