SOCIAL MEDIA & YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

As much as we’ve all come to cherish the connections we nurture through social media (especially during global emergencies like a pandemic), the downsides that come with socializing on platforms like Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter can’t be ignored and can even be detrimental to one’s mental health.

Not only do we see “highlight reels” of people’s lives that are specially curated to show off the best moments (and never the raw, real bits we all go through), but many of us use social media to gather news and current events, another aspect of these platforms that can massively impact our mental wellbeing as we’re barraged with endless stories of human rights violations, climate change and violent political battles.

With all of that said, it’s important to maintain good mental health and to draw firm boundaries with social media and the kind of content one chooses to consume. Here at TIME, we believe in the power of logging off, so here are some of our top tips for maintaining your mental wellbeing in the social media age.

SET TIME LIMITS

Part of drawing firm boundaries is setting time limits on your consumption of social media. Many of our favourite platforms are designed with infinite scrolling, a web-design technique that loads content continuously as the user scrolls down the page. This can keep us mindlessly consuming content for hours on end. Setting a timer for 10-15 minutes when mindfully tapping on a social media app can put a self-imposed limit on something that’s otherwise all too easy to get sucked into. Decide on a daily social media time limit that works for you and stick to it (and hopefully you’ll never be horrified again by your weekly screen time update).

BE CHOOSY ABOUT WHO YOU FOLLOW

Sure, we all follow people who live the lives we aspire to achieve one day, but at what cost to our mental health and wellbeing? And how much do we balance that out by following more “real” people, more “real” brands and more accounts that are meant to help us through the tough times? Being endlessly barraged by messaging of what we should be achieving rather than encouraging messages that meet us where we are now doesn’t constitute healthy social media usage in many cases. Go through your social media follows and edit them - decide which brands or creators are no longer serving you and smash that unfollow button.

CONNECT WITH LIKE-MINDED COMMUNITIES

When folks come from marginalized communities, social media can be an absolute minefield, especially for folks with public accounts where anyone with any old prejudiced thought or opinion can comment on, stitch or duet your content. Connecting with other marginalized folks with similar experiences to you can vastly improve one’s mental health and can allow for deeper connections to people who just get it. 

TAKE BREAKS

Deleting Instagram or Tik Tok from your phone for a spell won’t result in the complete collapse of your world (although we can’t guarantee anything regarding FOMO), so why not make it a habit to take 1-2 week breaks as a reset? That bookshelf full of recent purchases (ideally from your local independent bookstore) is just begging for you to dive in and get lost in words and pages. And that upcoming vacation? You’ll be more present without social media. Now we aren’t saying to remove yourself permanently from social media (that would be a little like shoving a stick in the spokes of our own bike, wouldn’t it?) but for peace of mind, these little moments offline can make a world of difference.

Those are just a few of our top tips for keeping your mind a bit healthier in a digital world that is still pretty fresh and ever-evolving. What are your thoughts? How do you keep up good mental health while cruising your favourite social media platforms?