One emotion is a social media pandemic

Anger.

Joy.

Sadness.

Disgust.

In more or less that order, researchers have found that social media emotions move from one to another until huge circles of people have it.

That’s fine if it is about a feel-good cat clip, but it is a feature of viral content that nothing moves faster than anger.

Wharton School professor Jonah Berger says anger sells because it is a high arousal emotion that fires people up and drives them to pass the emotion on. Wharton’s recent study analyzed 7,000 articles published during a 3-month period. He found that people’s reaction to the articles — not necessarily the tone of the articles — was what made an article go viral.

So, for example, a controversial figure posts on your favorite social media platform. The people who dislike him or her are provoked to anger. The people who like him or her are mobilized and subsequently resentful of the people provoked to anger.

Anger travels through the groups person-to-person like the flu.

People who constantly engage in social media debate get tangled in a web of anger that raises blood pressure, heart beat, anxiety, and stress.

Chronic anger, says anger management coach John Schinnerer, can lead to a host of bad physical symptoms. It has been linked to insomnia, brain fog, fatigue, and anxiety. When anger becomes a lingering mood, it can cause increased heart attack risk, higher blood pressure, migraines, depression, and stroke.

When social media gets toxic, people have to break the cycle of anger.

Some recommendations:

– Become more aware of anger in the present moment, according to US News. Try to pause and look at anger with curiosity. Maybe ask yourself if you will let this person control your emotions.

– Breathe deeply, get some exercise.

– Try progressive muscle relaxation by tightening and releasing major muscle groups in succession.

– Avoid mobs of angry posters.

– Log out.