Protect Your Mental Health Online

Social media is all the rage in the current world. From sharing photos with family and friends to staying up to date on the latest political news, most everything can be tied to social media. With such a major part of everyday life, it's important to understand how to prevent social media from taking over your mental health. 

Since the mid-2000s, social media has become a main part of many people's lives. Apps and websites like Facebook, Instagram, X – formally known as Twitter, and others have millions of users worldwide.

These apps and websites allow users to stay connected with friends and family online, share life updates, and be in the know of current events. However, social media isn’t all positive, there is still negative aspects that can take control and deeply affect your mental health.

How to protect your mental health

While there is a lot of negativities in the news and on social media, there are ways to protect and better your mental health while still taking advantage of the positive aspects of social media.

• Intentionally seek out positivity. Being able to interact with others via likes, shares, and comments is what makes social media popular. By intentionally reacting with positive emotions or leaving positive comments, your friends and family will feel better and be more likely to respond to your posts with the same positivity. In the same way, interacting with positive posts from influencer, business, and creator accounts causes your algorithm to push more positivity into your feed.
• Take advantage of groups. Facebook groups are a great way to connect with others who share your interests and experiences. These groups allow you to share ideas, concerns, and discoveries with other users. It is important to choose groups that encourage healthy and positive behaviors online over groups that are primarily negative.
• Set boundaries. Social media can be addicting, that’s why it’s important that you are aware of how much time you are spending online. Some apps have features where you can set a limit on how much time you are on that app. This causes the app to lock you out when you have reached the limit. Another way to limit the amount of time you are spending online is to turn off push notifications. Some other boundaries you could set can be “no phone zones” inside your house or workplace and “no phone times” throughout the day.
• Connect with people in real life. While social media can be a great way to connect, it can’t replace real-life interaction with your friends and family. As humans, we crave interaction with others and having dinner, going to the movies, or just hanging out at home with friends and family is more beneficial to your mental health than communicating online.
• Know the truth about social media. It is important to remember that social media is not real life. While users can share their lives online, many users only show the highlights of their lives and not the negative or average day-to-day activities. Filters are another aspect of social media that can change the way someone looks by whitening teeth, airbrushing features, or changing the shape of bodies. Many influencers use filters because they are being paid to look and post a certain way.

Sources: hhs.gov, helpguide.org, jedfoundation.org