Creating Balanced Relationships with Social Media

How to craft online safeguards:
1. Prune your social media garden by deleting who and what provokes anxiety
2. Protect yourself by blocking
3. Remove toxic apps that focus on negativity. Counter these with daily positives, such as Nice News
4. Moderate exposure by taking periodic breaks to gain perspective and create balance in online activities
5. Turn off notifications that eat up time and create distractions that keep you from main goals
6. Remove blue-light screens to improve your sleep
7. Look at computer tracking that informs about the actual length of your screen time

Social Media News and Mental Health

Excess emersion in social media is unwise. We become overwhelmed when spending hours online seeking answers. The mind is not constructed to process an oversaturation of discouraging material and millions of digital comparisons. When people become flooded with too much data, one response is to ‘give up,’ which can lead to learned helplessness. This manifestation of learned helplessness is related to a person’s belief in their ability to reach a goal. In this case, finding the correct piece of information that satisfies a sense of safety in what we perceive to be an unsafe world. An impression of powerlessness that comes with a perceived lack of control over a particular outcome can lead to depression. It is important to proactively take control over our wellbeing and lessen the effect of learned helplessness.