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Introduction Video (Will send you to a separate tab)

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Introduction Video (Will send you to a separate tab)

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Had trouble uploading videos directly so I had to upload it through Google Drive. The video will pop up in a different tab. Sorry for the inconvenience!

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I wanted to create something that encapsulated the feeling of anxiety one can experience online. Of course, I haven't included every possible thing that could cause anxiety but I included some pop-ups and notifications that could cause one to feel overwhelmed or threatened, especially when they get bombarded with them. One of the pop-ups is a cryptic message that I think represents how overly anxious people feel when online: "You can never escape. It's everywhere...". It was nice trying to work with digital art once again.

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(I interviewed my good friend, Serafina McFall (18), who also suffers from diagnosed Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and grew up using the internet. I asked her questions about her relationship between the internet and her anxiety.)

Here’s what I learned from her responses:

1. How would you describe your relationship with the internet? Positive? Negative?

Like many of her peers, Serafina grew up using the internet–it became a crucial aspect of her everyday life. She’s always had a “love-hate relationship” with it, she says. The positive side of her relationship includes activities such as watching movies, finding new music, and playing video games. On the negative side, Serafina recalls being exposed to explicit content online at a young age, such as gore which had a strong impact on her still developing brain. She believes that those negative encounters are in part responsible for her feelings of anxiety towards the internet.

2. How would you describe your relationship with your anxiety?

Due to her GAD, Serafina finds herself feeling anxious most of the time. She describes it as “ever-present” and “unwanted” with a desire of wanting to experience it less since she believes it would improve the quality of her life significantly. Additionally, it causes her to not want to be perceived by others and prevents her from doing the things she would like to achieve.

3. What do you think your anxiety or life in general would be like without the presence or use of the internet/social media?

Serafina has found that her anxiety and mental health overall have improved ever since she has stopped using social media. When she was using it on a regular basis, she felt that it was quite anxiety-inducing and overwhelming, making her surprisingly feel quite grateful that her account got hacked, since she doesn’t have to deal with it anymore. However, she does admit that when she did get positive feedback on her posts when she was using social media, it gave her feelings of happiness.

4. Is there a difference in your anxiety levels while you are online compared to when you are offline?

It mainly depends on what she’s doing on the internet, she says. She notices her anxiety to be quite high when using it for things such as school work and even during video games if she keeps losing, but that is something she has found to be more manageable anxiety-wise. She sometimes uses the internet as a way to destress since she finds her online hobbies very enjoyable. When she is offline, she notices it to be a lot more healing and effective in the long term when it comes to keeping her anxiety levels down.

5. What is a specific personal experience in which the internet has made you feel increasingly anxious/unsafe?

A common activity Serafina would do online when she was younger was use an online video chatting platform called Omegle where you could connect and chat with strangers who share the same interests as you. She informs that the website was never filtered or moderated properly, leading to highly disturbing instances where she would encounter predatory men touching themselves to her. Experiences like these have only contributed to her anxiety due to how traumatizing they were and have greatly impacted how she views the internet. “My anxiety worsened around the site until I stopped using it altogether. I wanted to make friends but was too scared to witness anything inappropriate again” she recalls. Recently, the video chatting platform has finally been banned for good reason.

6. How would you recommend coping with anxiety that gets triggered by frequent internet use?

Serafina recommends taking scheduled breaks and starting out with “taking out an hour of internet usage a day.” She finds that taking breaks from social media is also a very beneficial way to improve overall mental health. She also recommends taking these breaks as opportunities to explore new hobbies such as connecting with nature, reading books, baking, learning a new instrument, etc. Though her own mental health is not perfect, she is constantly working on it and finds that “being aware of what is around you can help you feel more centered.”

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Internet Anxiety Interview Questions (Serafina McFall) (1)

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Transcript (for those who need it):

Hello again. So, as stated in a part of my introduction video I stated that I feel like this is the perfect topic for me to research on because I myself suffer from anxiety.

More specifically, I’ve been diagnosed with two anxiety disorders: Social Anxiety and Generalized Anxiety Disorder.

I only focused on one of those disorders for the first essay we did, which was the identity essay, in which I talked about my social anxiety, and in the anecdote, I stated that I got diagnosed at the height of the pandemic in 2020 for all of these disorders including depression.

As for my relationship with the internet during that time, it was a time when everyone heavily relied on technology and social media because we were all social distancing and it was the way to communicate.

However, I noticed over time, that the more I spent looking at things online I only grew more anxious and depressed.

So, I found it interesting that technology also made school much harder as well because every teacher was using Zoom and assigning things online, which I believe made the workload even heavier so that really had an effect on me.

So in doing this research, I hope to find answers to the reason why these certain technological things affect not only my anxiety but others’ as well.

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Since starting this project, I’ve found countless reasons on how the internet can affect anxiety.

Instead of looking at the effects, we must look at internal factors that make us feel this way towards the internet. For example, the driving force behind a lot of our internet use is addiction. Addiction is linked to numerous mental health issues, one of which is a higher susceptibility to anxiety. Studies reveal that positive attention we receive from others online causes the brain's dopamine system to release. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released in response to pleasurable and motivating behaviors. Funnily enough, the internet is also used by anxious people as a way to escape uncomfortable situations or as a “security blanket”. Because of this, people become more drawn to the internet and their real-world social skills deteriorate, which further isolates them; a challenging self-perpetuating cycle. It is crucial to look at anxiety surrounding the internet at a deeper and biological level in order to solve it.

I’ve also learned, thanks to the interview I gave my close friend Serafina, that there are various dangers online that can greatly affect someone’s feelings of safety on the internet. Serafina has had numerous instances where she encountered gore and predatory men online when she was younger which have all had a deep impact on her relationship with the internet. Although I did not research these specific reasons for anxiety, the internet is filled with deeply disturbing, threatening, and explicit content that can easily cause anyone to have feelings of anxiety towards the internet.

A big part of the internet that is responsible for heightening anxiety (and possibly causing it) is social media. Things such as FOMO (the fear of missing out), the need for positive attention online in the form of likes, and comparing our lives and looks to the good parts people share online are a few examples of what could contribute to our anxiety. Cyberbullying is, of course, another factor that can cause one to feel nervous when interacting with others online. In addition, social media can make us feel like we need to keep up; notifications constantly remind us that we must do so. As a result, social media can disrupt one’s sleep due to how much it compels one to constantly check notifications and prioritize social media and sleep is crucial to keep anxiety levels low. Even though social media is meant to keep people connected, it seems to have the opposite effect on those who are very susceptible to anxiety.

Anxiety online also leads to numerous phenomena, one being “Cyberchondria.” It is a blend of the word hypochondria, an obsession with the possibility of suffering from a serious illness that is still undiagnosed, and “cyber” since this kind of concern over possible illnesses has become more common ever since the internet has become more accessible. Cyberchondria is primarily brought on by excessive time spent searching the internet for health-related information and reading content from unreliable health websites. It goes to show how much of an impact the internet has on anxiety since it can lead us to self-diagnose and constantly live in fear. (Word count: 524)