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10 (Good and Bad) Ways Social Media Affects Your Mental Health

Save your sanity without tossing your smartphone (11 Photos)

Melissa Pheterson on Apr 10, 2012 at 5:46PM

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10 (Good and Bad) Ways Social Media Affects Your Mental Health

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GOOD: You Can Connect... and Reconnect

Social media “meets our very basic need for a sense of belonging,” says JoAnne Cantor, Ph.D., author of Conquer CyberOverload: Get More Done, Boost Your Creativity, and Reduce Stress. “Hearing from our friends and family makes us feel important and loved.... We don’t want to be the last to know about some important, or even trivial, event of interest,” says Dr. Cantor. And our gadgets help quell that insatiable curiosity that we’ve had since we were babies.

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Has social media affected your mental health negatively or positively?