Social media is here to stay. Depending upon your perspective, that may be a good thing or a bad thing. Your current attitude toward social media may vary depending upon how you’re feeling about yourself, your life, and your choices. Now let’s Wonka that statement: “Strike that, reverse it!” What if you consider that social media may be influencing your attitude about your life and yourself? Quite possibly in numerous ways that range from undetectable to right in your face like a cat who wants breakfast? (I’m looking at you, Molly Mouse.) Human beings are complex creatures and experience a considerable range of emotions, which is healthy and expected. Just because you’re particularly grumpy on Monday morning while you peruse your favorite singer’s Instagram does not mean their concert photos actually caused your bad mood. It is also unlikely that following them convinced you that applying to graduate school is a waste of your life because you should be an opener on The Eras Tour. However…
If the songs you imagine performing include: “Why does my life suck so much?” and “I’m so boring!” and “I always look hideous in photographs!” and “I’m never going to have a perfect relationship/family/life like they have!” then we should have a chat. Yes, I’ll wait while you retrieve a beverage… Now that you’re back, do any of those sentiments sound familiar to you? Perhaps your personal concert series of self-deprecating hits isn’t playing in your big, beautiful, stadium of a brain on a daily basis. But if you’ve noticed that the more time you peruse social media, the shittier you feel about yourself, you may want to put down your phone, step back, and take a break for a bit.
So, how do you know if your social media activity is actually impacting how you think and feel? Ask yourself a few questions. For example, is it normal for you to be secretly hoping your friend’s trip abroad coincides with typhoon season? Is it normal to clench your teeth while you peruse your friend’s mud run/marathon/Iron Man photos (sadly, not the RDJ version), and imagine ways to enhance their protein powder with a helping of Turbolax? Are you bloody sick of feeling obliged to be happy for other people’s wonderful, amazing, fantastic news that is saturating their social media? Are you launching into a bitter tirade against people whom you really do like/love/tolerate with equanimity? If seeing another perfectly posed, sunset vacation photo or new house/job/car/baby/partner photo results in rolled eyes and muttered statements like “oh fucking good for you,” then you may have a raging case of what I call Happiness Fatigue.
You may feel resentful of someone else’s good fortune. Or at the very least, you resent that you must present a façade of cheerful enthusiasm and a congratulatory gift when you haven’t had anything amazing, awe-inspiring, or cool enough happen to you to cause the same resentment in them (you hope). Yep. You’re sick of seeing everyone else’s social media highlight reel that showcases their shiny, bright, carefree lives. Yeah…no. It’s time to throw some truth at that particular fairy tale. And by the way, why aren’t there showers and gift registries for people who complete a doctorate?? Asking for a friend. Anyway…
Social media - despite its ability to help animals get adopted/rescued/found, fundraise efficiently for good causes, and provide tired graduate students with excellent memes about the absurdity of dissertation work - is not all cat videos and perfect guacamole recipes. Social media is also a lot of bullshit. Some people use it to stay connected with faraway family and friends or to bring awareness to important causes or to provide pet safety tips. (FYI – the various oil diffusers that are so popular are TOXIC to cats and dogs, and any kind of lily plant/pollen/vase water ingestion can be lethal to cats in only days. Check with your vet or do your own research but keep Mister Snicklefrauser and Purrlock Holmes healthy, ok?) Remember in my welcome blog how I mentioned I get to write about whatever I want? Well, there you go.
Yes, social media can be helpful and enjoyable. However, it depends upon how you use it and why. If you aren’t using it in a way that is healthy for you, then you may want to make some adjustments. Only you can determine what works but here are some things that you can ask yourself and consider:
Do you feel like you struggle to stop using social media even when you need to do other things?
Do you feel guilty about your social media use?
Do you notice that your mood declines as you spend time on social media? Perhaps you start to feel like you don’t look good enough, aren’t interesting enough or adventurous enough or have anything to brag about?
Do you feel like you must carefully curate what you post so it always looks perfect and amazing?
Okay, I’ll tell you a story to help reinforce why being intentional and careful about social media is vital to your mental and emotional health. It’s about me. I have a very close friend who is extremely intelligent, accomplished, stylish, funny, and whom I love tremendously. He’s lived abroad for over a decade and typically posts photos from around the globe that show amazing places, meals, and activities. My travel fund is currently held hostage by the student loan people. In close friendships, you usually know a lot more about someone than casual friends or acquaintances do because you’ve been around for the tough times, the painful losses, the lonely stretches and the random life stresses. That context enables you to understand the complexity of a friend’s life with all of the good and the bad included. You can be aware that beyond the posts of stunning vistas and wildlife, your friend is having a really hard time. You can know that your friend travels extensively as a means of self-care and increasing well-being to support his mental health. You can know that your friend posts a lot of happy, adventurous photos for far away family to see so they don’t worry about him. You can know ALL of that and even know some of the science behind why social media impacts people as it does and even be a mental health professional…
…and you can still sit there scrolling through dozens of amazing photographs and think, “I am so boring and unadventurous. I’m essentially Bilbo before he goes on the adventure…but only if he never goes and just stays in his very cozy hobbit hole drinking tea and reading about adventures.” Despite my own understanding of social media, psychology, and my friend’s behind-the-scenes reality, I can still feel crappy about my own life if I immerse myself in his feed too much or too often. I KNOW how this shit works and yet I am still affected by it!! I shared that realization with my dear friend and explained my decision to unfollow him. Don’t get me wrong – I go to his page and check out his beautiful posts. The key for me is that I look when I’m in a good headspace to do so rather than having images just pop-up in my feed. When I am intentional about when I look at his posts, I am able to recognize and appreciate the photos for what they are: snapshots in time of some wonderful moments in his life. They are not a representation of every single moment of every day of his life and how he always feels: they are a highlight reel.
I learned as an exhausted, overwhelmed, stressed-out, doctoral intern - living away from her life, people, places, cats, and comforts for a year - that I needed to control when and how much social media content I ingested. I opted for none. I deactivated my social media for that entire year. And do you know what? It helped. Not only did it free me from procrastinating as much (I’m only helpful to you if I’m honest…I still found ways to procrastinate), it significantly reduced my tendency to compare myself and my experiences to the highly edited and carefully curated peek at others’ lives that is the essence of social media. Granted, I have no doubt there are some people who are as real as can be on social media and are posting all about their colonoscopy prep, delousing their kids, treating their toenail fungus, and doing their taxes. That isn’t what I usually see. I see the Hallmark Movie version of people’s lives and that isn’t particularly helpful if my own life is feeling more like a Scorsese film or a Stephen King novel.
In my experience, most people have plenty of days that are not so bright and shiny. They have their ups-and-downs with their moods, their relationships, their jobs, their self-confidence, and they may feel more comfortable leaving those snapshots of their lives on the cutting room floor. And that’s ok. Each person gets to choose what they share and what they don’t. The vital bit for you is remembering that what you are comparing yourself and your life to IS most likely someone else’s highlight reel, with just the most exciting, glamorous, enviable bits showing. (Side note: “Enviable Bits Showing” sounds like it should be a British band fronted by John Cleese, Graham Norton, and Ricky Gervais.) So, give yourself a break from social media if you’re feeling like you are somehow less than someone you’re following or not as _________ (insert complimentary adjective) or if you spend a lot of time worrying over what to post. You are enough just by being your wonderfully human self: highlights, bloopers, outtakes, fails, triumphs, foibles and all.
A great resource and good read about learning to use social media and technology to serve you and not undermine you is Cal Newport’s book, “Digital Minimalism.” It helps you figure out what works well for you and what doesn’t so you can navigate social media in a way that is healthy and helpful for you.
Paddington feels like social media is bringing him down today.
Paddington is getting snuggles instead of scrolling and remembering that he’s a great cat just the way he is: missing teeth, fishy breath, hairballs and all! Be like Paddington.
Thank you for reading! You’ve been Smudged!
Tracy
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