The use of social media has increased tenfold with the growth of smart technology and ease of access to the internet. Without doubt, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter have all made it easy for people to interact effortlessly and seamlessly without being restricted by regional borders. Sharing of ideas is more convenient now than it has ever been.

But there is a twist in the plot: Studies show that social media is leading many people to depression and loneliness. Social media users tend to sleep less, are hyperactive, struggle to be attentive, and are more vulnerable to social pressure than those who don’t have social media accounts. Although no study has given a conclusive analysis as to whether social media can cause depression, there is definitely an observational correlation between the two. However, for people who struggle with depression, who believe is a cause from the over usage of social media, there are available life coach training that can help them overcome this issue.

4 Ways Social Media Is Leading To Depression

1.         Increased feeling of social isolation

The more time you spend on the internet (that includes social media), the more socially isolated you get. Offline social networks such as community work, playing together, interacting in church, and telling tales around a campfire, among others, encourage people to be closer together and share their common problems. Social media isn’t anything like that. Users talk with far-away friends and neglect those around them. And because the circle of “friends” is based in remote locations, no one is there for the other in case of a crisis. After all, having many virtual friends on social media isn’t a substitute for real friends. That virtual existence leads to deeper social isolation.

2.         The comparison factor

Browsing through social media can potentially ruin your self-esteem and confidence because, by the look of things, everyone out there is doing better than you in all aspects of life. Everyone seems happier than you, in a better relationship than you, love their job more as compared to you, and have all the good things in life. That comparison mentality leads to depression in more people than in real-life comparison.

Research also shows that people get depressed when they feel like their social media friends are doing worse than them. This form of comparison often makes people feel better about their lives in real life, but it appears to be different in social media spheres. It seems like social media “friends” feel better when they are all at the same social level, maybe because they are able to engage more “productively” that way.

3.         Envy and jealousy

After comparing your life with your friends’ on social media, you will envy them if they seem to be better and happier than you are. If that envy is not controlled early enough, it grows into jealousy. This is a very unhealthy situation to find yourself in because you can easily become a hater. Sometimes you will be tempted to post jealousy-inducing content on your pages in order to challenge the “friend”. And if the friend gets equally jealous, chances are that he or she will post a photo or a story that will induce jealousy in you. In the long run, you will have a group of jealousy friends trying to outdoor one another; a vicious cycle of malice. If you feel like your content isn’t causing enough jealous on the other end, you can easily be depressed.

4.         Sleep deprivation

A normal adult should sleep for at least 6 hours at night. This is, however, almost impossible now because people are chatting for hours. People are even waking up in the middle of the night to check how their posts are doing online.

Sleep deprivation can cause depression in too many ways. First, your colleagues in the workplace are sleep deprived just like you meaning that everyone is tired and unhappy. The office stays moody for the entire day, aggravating your loneliness.

Secondly, sleep deprivation affects how your body responds to workday activities. If you love the gym, for example, poor sleep will lower your workout enthusiasm and results. Lastly, poor sleep lowers your immune system. If you get sick, you stress out and hate your life, and that isn’t good for your mental health.

Conclusion

Although scientists and psychologists are still trying to figure out how social media relates to the sudden rise of depression cases among the youth, it is important that you find help if you are seeing any signs of depression and loneliness. Some possible alternatives to somehow mitigate the effect of social media so that it does not lead to harmful consequences:

Limit its usage- Try and schedule your day in such a way that social media usage is at its minimum. Even if you can not stop all the social media channels at once, try to have a schedule, for example, 10 minutes of Facebook, then after e a couple of hours 10 minutes of Instagram, etc.

Engage in extracurricular activities- Engaging in different activities where you have physical contact with people can be of great help. This will not only take your mind off the phone but will also help you with your health.

Breaking social media mania is not an easy task. Eventually, it will have ups and downs, and not everyone can reach the desired results immediately. However, once you experience the improved habit of not scrolling down constantly, you will create a healthy balance and feel good about yourself.

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Rilind Elezaj is a devoted career specialist. He helps people make career choices that feel genuinely right for them. He usually helps the individual evaluate their background, curiosities, passions and training so that they can choose a job, business or type of further education that helps them be successful and fulfilled. He also enjoys helping people write their CV.

Measuring the Return on Investment (ROI) of your mentoring program is easy when you have connected mentoring to specific business objectives for your members or to employee recruitment and retention programs. In these cases, you can directly calculate the revenue earned versus the costs saved as a result of your mentoring program.

However, when your objective for introducing a mentoring program is career development, succession planning, diversity and inclusion or leadership development, calculating the ROI is a little less straight-forward. In these cases, you need to conduct surveys at the beginning of the program, at the end of each mentoring relationship and one-year on in order to effectively demonstrate results and measure the ROI.

For example, here are simple survey questions that can be used to track and compare results of a mentoring program designed to support career development.

Before starting a mentoring relationship:

• Do you have a clear understanding of your career direction? Yes/No

Upon completing a mentoring relationship:

• As a result of this mentoring relationship, do you have a better understanding of the opportunities that suit your skills and interests? Yes/No

One-year after completing a mentoring relationship:

• Do you feel that your career has progressed in the right direction? Yes/No

To determine your mentoring program ROI using these questions, start by calculating the percentage of ‘Yes’ responses to each question to determine the impact of your mentoring initiative. For example, if 20% of respondents said ‘Yes’ to the ‘before starting a mentoring relationship’ question, and 80% of respondents said ‘Yes’ to the ‘one-year after completing a mentoring relationship’ question, then your program helped 60% of participants in their career development.

Those 60% of participants who feel that their career has progressed in the right direction are also likely more satisfied in their career. It’s a logical conclusion then, that this was as a result of your mentoring program, meaning those participants are also more likely to stay with your organization long-term and tell others about the benefits of working for your organization.

With those results, you can now calculate a more concrete ROI because happy employees are less likely to look for work at other companies, meaning higher retention and lower recruitment costs. 

Resource:

• ROI calculator and mentoring program proposal template

When it comes to purchasing mentoring software, some organizations buy it, and forget about it, whereas others put time and effort into the launch of the program and then leave it to achieve just a 20 percent participation rate. Organizations that see true success with their mentoring software launch it, work at it and achieve an over 50 percent participation rate.

With mentoring software, launching it and working at it is like going to the gym to work out regularly while also eating properly – you need to consistently do both in order to see the best results. The following are our top 5 strategies for achieving the greatest success with your mentoring program:

* Lead training sessions to help members understand the impact that mentoring can have on them, how the program works, and how to be an effective mentee and mentor.

* Keep members on track by answering questions, and supporting them throughout the mentoring process (e.g. ensuring that invitations are accepted, mentoring agreements and evaluations are completed).

* Send regular messages to the community (e.g. mentoring tips, success stories, and surveys). Within MentorCity, you can pre-set these types of messages to be sent at regular intervals throughout the mentoring relationship.

* Develop marketing materials and promote the program within your organization.

* Add new resources (e.g. articles, publications, and videos). Start discussions, contribute to them and monitor them regularly.

The MentorCity team is here to help you achieve success. We can support you in running a great program. Get in touch today.

Resources:

* Delegate program admin responsibilities with this worksheet

* Watch an admin in action in MentorCity

A good mentoring relationship has a mentoring agreement in place to help ensure that mentees and mentors are always on the same page. It acts as a tool to help both mentees and mentors understand what’s expected of them as well as the specifics of their mentoring program and the program’s goals.

Program administrators can customize this agreement to outline both the vision and goal of the program as well as their expectations for how they would like the relationship to work. Is the goal of your program for mentors and mentees to meet only once? Or is it a longer-term mentoring relationship? Or, is a one-time meeting all that’s expected and, if there is good chemistry, then they can engage in a longer-term mentoring relationship? A mentoring agreement ensures that everyone involved knows what is expected of them when committing to being a mentor or mentee.

Outlining the length of the mentoring relationship in the mentoring agreement has its advantages. Doing so allows you to:

* Remind participants to book their next meeting at the end of each meeting to keep their relationship going

* Schedule a series of emails that are delivered throughout the mentoring relationship, such as a pulse survey and a conversation topic for each month

* Email everyone in a mentoring relationship about completing the program evaluation versus only the people who have set their relationship length

As the mentoring relationship evolves, both partners can easily update their mentoring agreement to reflect any changes in the relationship. When one person makes a change to the mentoring agreement, the other person will be notified by email.

By taking some time to customize your mentoring agreement, you are setting up mentoring relationships for greater success as participants have a better understanding of how their mentoring relationship should move forward.

Resources:

·      Download a sample mentoring agreement

·      Watch how to complete the mentoring agreement and set goals in MentorCity

We have taken our admin matching functionality to a whole new level with Speed Match. Here’s how it works:

1.      Set the search criteria that are important for your mentoring program such as the custom fields that you have created (values, gender, interests, etc.), specialized skills/development areas, job functions, industries, meeting locations, languages, and the competencies section. Speed Match will take everything into account when recommending matches.

2.      Click on Speed Match which is in the Match section of the Admin Dashboard, and we will get the matches ready for you to review. Once they are ready, we will send you an email.

3.      All the matches will have a compatibility percentage, the areas that they have in common will be highlighted, and a competencies rating – making the process very transparent.

4.      Review the recommendations and deselect the ones that you do not agree with. Your work will be saved, so you can always come back to where you are.

5.      When you are happy with the matches, click on Match Relationships, and we will send an email to everyone notifying them about their new mentoring relationship.

• Tip: You can customize the email that’s being sent in the Send Messages section’s System Generated Messages.

6.      The next time that you click on Speed Match, we will give you a whole new set of recommended matches to review.

Try this best practice for your mentoring program. Set a deadline for members to self-select their mentoring relationships and then use Speed Match to match the remaining people.

Would you like to give Speed Match a try? Ask us about providing your organization with access for 24 hours at no cost.

As an aspiring author, my goal is always to put my best foot forward when it comes to writing, in the hope I might become successful some day. When I first started writing, I wanted to get my stories written and published in just a day all by myself. I then started to realize that it’s more challenging to reach a goal.

To become successful, you need a great support system. A mentor can help you organize your thoughts so you will eventually achieve your goal, and it will be much better than how you would have done it on your own - this goes for everything in life. Your mentor can instill confidence in you to keep going, even when you don’t feel like it. Your mentor will be the guide that provides you with the knowledge that will help you your entire life.

Have you ever had a dream to do something, but you don’t know where to start? I know that’s how I felt before I reached out to other authors to learn from their experiences because they know how the game works, and how to change it.

MentorCity can help you to reach your goals, so you don’t spend your life wondering ‘what would have happened if I had taken that chance to become more than I am now?’ On the MentorCity website, all you must do is put in the field that you would like to explore, or the skills that you would like to work on such as marketing, presentation skills, etc. It will match you up with a perfect mentor already qualified with the skills you would like to learn. You can also be a part of improving someone’s life by becoming a mentor.

Thanks to MentorCity, I now know what direction I am going in. The amazing people in the MentorCity community have helped me to develop my character traits to become more relatable. How are you going to spend the rest of your life? It’s your decision, and a better life can begin with a single click of a button.

By: Kimmy Mintz, 12 years old