Hey Everyone!

Hope you’re all doing well!

I have always read and heard stories about how social media, Instagram in particular, can make you feel sad, depressed, or just less satisfied about your own life after you spend time scrolling through carefully curated and edited images of other people living their “best lives”. However, I never thought it would affect me until it finally did.

Ideally, the best thing to do would be to just stop using social media. However, if you are like me and you just can’t give it up completely here are three tips that might help:

Unfollow:

I know this one is pretty obvious but one of the most effective things you can do is to unfollow accounts that, in any shape or form, make you feel less about yourself or your situation. I know that this is much easier said than done because you might feel that you love these accounts and you may think you will miss them.

But you really need to think about how each and every person/account that you follow impacts you and for your own well-being unfollow the ones that have a negative effect.

From personal experience I can tell you that once I unfollowed certain people I did miss them for a few days but since I no longer saw them on my feed I quickly forgot about them.

Curate:

Your social media feed is what you make out of it. Many people only focus on the negative effects of social media. But the reality is that there are many inspirational, motivational and educational accounts out there on a wide range of topics and its up to you to find ones that interest you.

For example, I have three pet birds and I follow quite a few bird related accounts and most of these accounts post pictures and videos of their adorable pet birds and these always brighten my mood. But more importantly some of these accounts are very educational and informative and they have definitely helped me take better care of my birds.

Find Your Triggers:

This tip definitely relates to the first tip because its really important to take time to consciously think about how social media effects you. Aside from unfollowing certain people, its also important to think about other triggers as well.

For example, a few weeks ago it was the holiday of Eid (I like to describe Eid as the Muslim version of Christmas) and basically this year my family didn’t do much to celebrate.

But of course, when I went on to Instagram I saw all of these people doing all of these fun and amazing things and this really put me in a bad mood. In that moment, I completely lost perspective of all that I should be grateful for.

When it comes to social media everyone has different triggers. There are certain times of the day, month, or year that you may be feeling more vulnerable and it is very important to first figure out when these are for you and then alter your social media use during these times.

I hope that you find these tips to be helpful!

With Love,

Yasmin