As a student, I can easily hold up my hands and say:
I cannot live without social media.
Even if I wanted to cut all ties with those pesky apps, I couldn’t. Between news updates, keeping in touch with family, and arranging my work rotas, social media is now used for everything.
As a result, it is a space we all occupy for a large portion of our day, but unfortunately, it isn’t always a space that is great for your mental health.
So, here are some things you can do right now to tidy up your social medias to stop them from weighing you down.
1. Declutter
Have a look at your followers and friend list. In the same way that you would tidy your room, tidy your socials. Make your socials the newly-cleaned room that you keep walking back into, just because it is so amazingly beautiful.
If you’re anything like me, my Facebook account was created in 2013, in the midst of my ‘the more Facebook friends I am, the cooler I am’ phase. I was friends with my school bully for years after we’d left school, when I suddenly realised that she was one click away from being out of my life. Now, the only people that see the posts about my life, are the people that absolutely want to see the posts about my life.
2. Unfollow if you don’t like
If you click onto your Instagram now, I can guarantee that of the top ten posts on your feed, you can unfollow at least two of those accounts. Whether it’s because of toxic positivity (more below!), irritating thrice daily posts or just because you’ve outgrown the account, unfollow it.
3. Set timers
Particularly with the world the way it is at the moment, it is so easy for five minutes of harmless scrolling to turn into fifty minutes of doomscrolling. Set a quick timer on your phone to limit yourself. Ten or twenty minutes at a time is more than enough.
4. Don’t try to do ALL the things
Like scrolling on your social media while you watch TV. This usually means that I end up getting sucked into my phone and pay absolutely no attention to what is happening in front of me.
5. Toxic positivity
Be careful of this. Not everyone’s lives are absolutely perfect all of the time. Don’t let yourself slide into thinking that they are.
6. Fill your feed with happy!
Fill your feed with happiness and positivity. There is a difference between this and toxic positivity. Make sure that you identify this difference in every social media account that you follow. Here are some great mood-boosting accounts to follow on Instagram: @thehappynewspaper, @goodnews_movement, @trulytwenties_
