Social media may seem unavoidable in the 21st century. I want to show you how you can use it for mental HEALTH instead of mental anguish. There is an analogy that everyone has a good and a bad dog within them (although I dislike the judgments there). This is similar to the angel/devil on your shoulder analogy…however take a moment to consider which dog you feed more often? If they are your pets, which one do you spend more time nurturing?
Social media can be used for both good or evil. You can subscribe to blogs that fixate on negativity, make you feel worse, and fuel your pity party or you can subscribe to those that are POSITIVE!
As a challenge, on all sites you are on, I want you to intentionally follow pages, hashtags, and topics that uplift you:
- mental health
- wellness
- kindness
- hobbies
- nature
- encouragement
On all networking sites, the users and topics that you search, subscribe to, and follow are up to you. Try following inspiration, funny pictures, cute animals, users that make a point of being encouraging, and/or appropriate family members. There is even a sub-network called “Fitspo” which is a type of posts that are fitness inspiration, these would be an example of something great to follow. Most sites even give you the option of “blocking” other users or “hiding” them so you don’t have to worry about hurting their feelings. A big NO-NO here is following triggering topics, users that bring you down, encourage behavior you are trying to stop doing, or highly judgmental users, and topics that normalize behavior you don’t want to continue. If a user or topic makes your conscious put up a red flag or if it’s something you feel ashamed to follow…REMOVE It!!
*these statements are made after my own investigation and use of each site. This may or may not be the policy of each website and/or app.
