Top 5 tips to navigate your social media anxiety!!

Does she look so good face to face? Not at all!!! He got so many likes. How many more does he need? Their family looks perfect in the photo; why not mine? I got 5 likes!!! Wow, one more!! Great.

These are the monologues we think about when we scroll through our social media accounts. Sometimes, we don’t even realize what we are thinking; it is so spontaneous. But you have to admit that it is affecting not only our mental health but also our lives and the lives of people we are closely associated with. Let us dive into the details.

Studies show that high usage of social media has resulted in depression and anxiety as the top two reasons affecting mental health. This is most prominent among youth in their teenage or early 20s because they are the ones who use social media the most. They spend nearly 2–4 hours each day in it on average. Surprisingly, that is not even half the time they spend on eating and energizing themselves.

Therefore, an action that consumes so much of one’s time is bound to affect one’s life. Let me share some of my personal experiences. The moment I upload something on Facebook for my friends to see, I keep checking my mobile application every few minutes. Many a time, there is actually no notification or update ring on my mobile, but I still keep checking, just to ensure that I have not missed it. This is a phantom vibration, an extremely distracting feeling, which makes me zone out from whatever is happening around me.

Even when I visit a beautiful place or attend a party, my first reaction is to take a photo. The first thought I get is, “I need to upload this on social media to show my friends that I am enjoying myself so much.” Ideally, my first thought should be, this photo is a sweet memory, I can check it now and then from my mobile and remember those enjoyable trips. But unfortunately, it is not so.

Social media has become a platform where we are eager to show people how active, enjoyable, and picture-perfect our daily lives are. The more problems we face in real life, the more we are prone to showing off to the entire world that our life is a “bed of roses.” This mentality slowly and steadily creates competition in our minds to ensure that people see only the good things happening in our lives, not the bad ones. As a result, we are stressing ourselves to find ways to show all the good and hide all the bad.

But let us get down to the real fact. We all know that no one can have a life that is all good. Life will have its own ups and downs. So, is it really worth spending time flaunting our impeccable lives when, in reality, it is not so?

The likes, shares, and comments that we get on our uploads are like currencies, which attribute value to our posts, like money measures the value of any product or service. Thus, we behave like a product, claiming people’s attention and time to create value in the form of likes and shares. Very often, we even delete our posts because they are not selling well. In the end, we judge ourselves based on what other people think about us.

But now, let’s come to the actual point. Is social media to blame for all of these? Not really, because it all depends on how we use it. Here is a list of things that you should do to boost your social media presence in a healthy way.

• Follow people who post content that helps you take a break from your hectic life, like a comedian, a yoga instructor, an artist, etc.
• Join groups involved in positive things. Many people or organizations post things related to your hobbies, such as gardening, cooking, how to train pets, travel guides, craft-making videos, etc. Following such posts will keep you happy and enhance your knowledge.
• Don’t compete with friends who post pictures of their magical lives on social media. Remember that they also have difficult times, which you cannot see.
• Remember, your worth is not defined by what others think of you; it is defined by what you think about yourself.
• Control the amount of time you spend on social media. You are missing out on many other exciting things in life.

Therefore, use the above tips to enhance your social media life and enjoy it to the fullest. It offers a sea of opportunities, provided we are able to receive them and use them for our own good.