Scrolling through social media we are bombarded by pictures of our friends’ vacations and fancy brunches, their career milestones, happy families, and fitness achievements. While we may be happy for them, these social comparisons (evaluations of oneself relative to others) can leave us feeling inadequate and dissatisfied. This may be especially true for young people—recent studies have found that social media use is associated with negative social comparisons – leading to reduced well-being, more envy, and greater depressive symptoms. Some scholars, such as Professor Jonathan Haidt, link the detriments of social media and its “poisonous” social comparison to a mental health crisis in adolescents, arguing for a cell phone ban in schools.
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Social media is all but unavoidable in many people’s lives, and it, of course, also has its benefits. This, then, begs the question: Is there a way that we can better navigate social media without incurring its possible toll on mental health?
As social scientists who study how people think about and interact with others, we’ve recently found some promising clues in our research on people with autism. Because autistic people do not process social exchanges in the same way as neurotypical individuals, their responses to social comparison may be a useful guide for the rest of us.
In a series of studies, published in August 2024 in the journal Social Cognition, our research team examined individuals’ emotional responses to social comparisons. We compared the degree to which autistic and neurotypical participants expressed social comparison emotions, like envy. Participants in our study read about a hypothetical situation describing a peer who was much better off than the participants—they lived in a nicer house, had more romantic success, and were more accomplished in their career. After reading about this person, participants reported how much envy they felt. Our findings were striking. On average, autistic participants reported 24% less envy than neurotypical participants.
So, what is it about autism that appears to buffer against the negative impact of social comparisons?
One possible explanation is related to social cognitive differences often observed in autistic individuals. Autistic spectrum disorders are often characterized by difficulties with social communication, reciprocal social interaction, and understanding others’ intentions and mental states more generally. Autistic people may be less likely to feel bad after a negative social comparison because they are less likely to consider what is going on in other people’s minds, a psychological process known as perspective-taking or “Theory of Mind.” But why would this reduced attention to others’ mental states protect them from feeling envious or dissatisfied?
Read More: The Pervasive Loneliness of Autism
It may be that envy is driven not only by seeing what others have, but by imagining how happy or satisfied they feel in that given moment. A 2012 study showed that certain brain regions involved in understanding others’ mental states may function differently in autistic individuals compared to neurotypical individuals. These differences in neural activity suggest that autistic individuals may rely less on mental state information, which is unobservable and abstract, when processing social interactions and more on tangible, concrete details. In this way, they may be less likely to consider whether others are happier than they are, which could explain why they report feeling less bad in response to social comparisons.
Further supporting this logic, a 2014 study examined responses to social comparison in autistic and neurotypical people using a game in which participants received monetary rewards. The researchers assigned participants to two conditions. In the social comparison condition, participants compared the amount they won to the larger reward of another participant. In the private comparison condition, they compared the amount they won to a larger amount that they could have won. While neurotypical participants were much less satisfied with their reward in the social comparison condition, autistic participants’ satisfaction did not depend as much on which condition they were in. Together with our findings, these results point to a critical difference in how social comparisons can be experienced: While some people’s happiness depends on whether they compare favorably to others, others focus more on their own outcomes without factoring in social comparisons.
What can this teach us about how to protect ourselves from the potentially damaging effects of social media comparisons on our mental well-being?
While it may be difficult to avoid comparing ourselves to others on social media, the way we respond to these social comparisons is fortunately not set in stone. Adopting strategies that shift our focus away from others and on to ourselves perhaps (an approach that may come more naturally to autistic people) may help reduce the negative feelings linked to adverse mental health outcomes. For instance, keeping a gratitude journal or dedicating our time to hobbies and passions that bring us joy can help us redirect our energy and better appreciate our own lives.
While social media comparisons may prompt us to think about what we don’t have, they can also provide us with new ideas and perspectives, motivating us to improve ourselves, and set and accomplish goals. In line with this optimism, a 2018 paper finds that, while comparisons on Instagram can lead to envy, they can also bring inspiration, underscoring the positive motivational potential of social media.
Although our experiences on social media can lead us to feel like the grass is greener on the other side, we may do well to cultivate a self-improvement mindset, and tend to our own emotional landscapes and, ultimately, our personal growth.
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