4 Ways to Improve Your Relationship With Social Media

1. Assess Your Social Media Use

The first step to making changes is to assess areas for improvement. Here are some questions you can ask yourself:

• Do some platforms make you feel worse than others?
• Are there particular people or accounts you follow on social that result in you feeling bad about yourself?
• How much time are you spending on social media?
• When are you most likely to be on it? Is it getting in your way of your sleep or spending time with others?
• What are you not doing in your life because you are on social media?
• If you post on social media, how do you feel afterward? Are you looking for validation from others? (I previously wrote this post about people looking for excessive reassurance and validation on social media).

2. Reduce Distressing Content

If certain content makes you feel worse about yourself, you can alter what content is shown to you. Therefore, if you feel vulnerable about a specific aspect of your life, give yourself permission to hide/mute/unfollow people and accounts that cause you to experience distress. Consider some common areas of personal vulnerability that might be affecting you:

• Relationships
• Financial struggles
• Job dissatisfaction
• Body image concerns
• Grief
• Race, sexual orientation, or gender-based traumatic stress
• Medical problems or physical disability
• Mental health concerns
• Suppose you are struggling with one or more of the above issues and find that seeing content on social media makes you feel worse about your situation. Consider making changes to the content you see (e.g., unfollowing or hiding/muting certain people or accounts, skipping videos that feed into specific algorithms).

3. Increase Content That Improves Your Well-Being

Consider what kind of content brings you joy. There are some wonderful accounts on social media – think about the things that make you happy and start following those accounts.

4. Get Off Social Media and Get Into Your Life

If you spend too much time on social media, consider strategies to reduce your use. For example, on your phone, you can limit your time on certain apps (e.g., using Screen Time and Downtime on the iPhone). It’s also helpful to consider if you are using social media for avoidance purposes (you might not even realize that you are doing that). Are you using social media to avoid problems or doing things that cause you stress?"

Read the complete article available at Psychology Today!

Reflection:

How is your relationship with social media?

#SocialMedia #Well-being #MentalHealth