Social media is a great place to keep up with friends and family, see what is going on in Hollywood, buy some cute stuff as well as keep up with current news. While social media has been an amazing hub of information, it can also be a place where your mental wellness is at risk. I am going to give you 5 tips on how to stay lit on social media without sacrificing your mental health:
1. Review who you are following
- If you follow pages that are saturated with news, then maybe it is time to pick 1 or 2 to follow and unfollow the rest. This is important because the more negative videos or news posts you read, your mood and emotions can be changed for the worse causing insomnia, depression, and PTSD.
- Hack #1: Instead of following them, just look them up when you want to see what they are posting so that you have control of what is popping up on your feed. This will also show you how often you are reading the news so you can monitor your intake.
2. Don’t click every video.
- It seems that more violent videos are being reposted more and more and it’s not okay. While I understand the importance of bringing awareness to serious situations, it is not healthy to watch any videos with killings, attempted murders, domestic violence to get the point across. These videos can cause nightmares, insomnia, PTSD, anxiety, and depression. It is best to not watch videos that you know are clips of traumatic events.
- Hack #2: For those of you who feel you need to post the videos, post a warning slide before the video so the audience is aware of the content of the video so they can make the decision to watch or not. You never know what can trigger someone into a mental breakdown so let’s be more considering and warn them first.
3. Don’t scroll before going to bed
- Unfortunately, we don’t always know what is going to pop up on our feed. So when we are winding down for bed and a negative post come up, our entire sleep system is off. To avoid poor sleep, try not to scroll social media 1-2 hours before bed. Your brain needs time to shut down so when you keep pouring content into it you get less sleep.
- Hack #3. Instead of scrolling social media; watch a positive tv show, listen to some relaxing music on YouTube, or deep breathing techniques before going to bed. This will help you wind down and get better sleep.
4. Try not to get lost in the comments section
- Some of these posts have some interesting comments and it is good to read sometimes what others are thinking. It can also be harmful as people can say extremely negative things, make you question yourself, or even encourage bullying. If you find yourself getting upset about what others are saying or even sad, it is time to stop reading them. Remember you are absorbing this information which in time and affect your mental health.
5. Be responsible for your own content; stop the trauma!
- Remember you don’t know what is going on in your own follower’s lives, protect their mental health and yours by not posting a lot of negative information. We have to make sure we don’t keep passing the trauma to each other but instead stopping it by not engaging in reposting all videos and posts. Safe guard your content as if children were on your page; if you don’t want to negatively affect them why would you do it to others?