City: London
August 7
Check in
Social Media and mental wellbeing
It is reported that 90% of teens have used social media once, 75% have at least one active social media account, and 51% check their social media daily. Social media can be a good way for teens to share their lives, explore news and current events, and connect with friends. But in other cases, heavy social media dependence can lead to mental health issues such as body image problems through comparison, general comparison, loneliness, etc.
But there can be a healthy way to use social media! Today’s page will focus on the different ways you can enjoy social media while having consideration for your own mental wellbeing.
Here are your check in questions:
How are you today? If you could describe today’s mood in one color, what would be it?
What was the first thing you did when you got up this morning?
How do you think social media positively affects your life? How do you think it negatively affects your life?
Activities
Tips to use social media in a healthy way
Treat others on online how you would like to be treated
before commenting on someone’s post or posting yourself, think: would this negatively affect someone else? would I want this message to be said to me?
When you see something you want to take a picture of and post, take that one picture. Then, remember to put the phone away after one or two clicks and enjoy the moment you’re in :)
Your actions have effects, always! Being conscious of these consequences is a good thing. This video is a cool insight as to what happens when nature goes viral.
3. Start your day right. If your first instinct is to check social media right after you wake up, try something new. Try for one or two days of the week to sit for a few minutes just waking up. Then start your morning routine.
If you start small, you may find it easier to quit checking social media after you wake up altogether.
For more tips, please check out this helpful article!
The Science Behind Social Media
Social media was designed to keep users engaged - the endless scroll, the explore page, the like feature, and more. To understand how to use social media in healthy ways, it may be interesting to understand the science behind social media’s design.
Read more on the science:
Getting 10 likes versus 100 likes versus 1000 likes does something to our brains. Depending on what we have posted, the likes are a deceptive way of telling us how much that content has been accepted. That in itself can be very harmful to people, especially young people whose ideas of identity are beginning to form and stabilize.
Maybe it’s time for a social media break. Or go through your following lists and review which ones you are harmed by and which ones you can make genuine connections to. The other thing about body image and social media is that we tend to make comparisons instead of links. If you can learn to associate with certain things and find similarities between yourself and the poster, comparison won’t worm its way into your mind. If it’s difficult to do so, perhaps it’s better to review the worth following a certain group or company (etc, etc) has for you and your mental wellbeing.
Resources
Mindfulness and social media
Apply your skills in mindfulness to your social media usage! Watch this video to find out how.
Content belongs to Tedx Talks
Dealing with feelings of isolation
Social media, in its worser forms, can make us feel isolated from other people’s lives as they go on different adventures than you are. Hopefully, the tips we provided today will help with that.
This video talks about how you can feel less isolated and understand the difficult emotions you may be feeling and that to encourage you to remember that you’re not alone.