The Social Media Psyche: Modeling Mental Disturbance in the Digital Age

Social Behavior And Mental Health

The emerging global phenomenon of social media use suggests novel insights about social cognitive processes as it offers latent indicators of processing, remembering, and using contextual information by online users to explain and predict their own behavior and that of others (Meshi et al., 2015). Thus, social cognition, being a part of the psychological aspect, enables the individuals to understand human perspectives and their behavior towards each other. This journey of perception to decision-making follows a three-step process as examined via the lens of cognitive functionality: (i) social perception, (ii) social understanding, (iii) social decision-making (Arioli et al., 2018). Perception is the state of being aware of something through our five senses: vision, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, tactile, and the sixth-one being common sense. Perception plays a vital part in mental health as it determines how individuals understand and respond to diverse situations, experiences, and stimuli which facilitates the development of positive and adaptive perceptions that may lead to improved mental health outcomes. Moreover, mental disturbance affects how we think, feel, and act, thereby determining the stress handling, making healthy choices and highlighting the importance of mental wellbeing. One of the major psychology-grounded theory on evolution of suicide risk from mental disturbance is based on the impact on interpersonal needs of a person.