Even though the coronavirus has put the entire world on hold, social media is a phenomenon that hasn’t taken a break. When we’re stuck inside all day, working and trying to maintain a sense of normalcy, it can be extremely easy to fall down the rabbit holes of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to distract ourselves from how our new, unfamiliar routines. However, while scrolling through social media can entertaining and informative, it is also incredibly draining and overwhelming. As individuals of the 21st century, social media is a huge part of many of our lives, so much so that it is difficult to separate ourselves from it.
It is now a daily practise to wake up and look at your phone as soon as you are consciously able to process large chunks of information. If you are an avid Twitter user, your mind is usually bombarded with bits of distressing information given to you in less than 280 characters. If you are an avid Facebook or Instagram user, you may be viewing images and videos posted by people who appear to lead lives that are more interesting and fulfilling than your own, even though most of those visuals are carefully constructed narratives that were put together to create an appearance of perfection.
As we have begun to spend most of our time at home, our mental health is not in the same space that it in was pre-coronavirus. So, we turn to social media in the hopes that it will help us by providing us with some sort of distraction while providing us with some sort of escape from the harsh realities of the world and everything that is going on in it outside our homes. While social media does provide us with the escape that we crave, it also has the opposite effect intended – it provides us with too much overwhelming information that is difficult to ignore, thus feeding us with a negativity that is hard to turn off. Social media is both an escape and a trap.
There may come a point in time when you feel more drained and overwhelmed than informed, and so, you may it find it rather helpful and useful to simply unplug. Switching social media and your phone off for a day can benefit you greatly. To begin with it, it reduces anxiety. It is important to remember that by switching off your social media, you are allowing yourself a little time to breathe, disconnect and focus on something that isn’t a growing global problem. In this pandemic, it can be very easy to get sucked into the feeling of helplessness, and that feeling can sometimes be harder to deal with than the fear of getting sick. By focusing your energy on activities that are separate from social media, you are providing yourself with the ability to relax mentally.
In addition to this, your time spent at home could mean that you are running out of ways to entertain yourself, and the internet is the quickest fix to solve that problem. Instead, you could try doing something that is completely different, such as reading a book, baking a cake, or talking to somebody for a long time. Reducing the amount of time spent on social media will help improve how you interact with other people, and it will improve your relationships with them as well, while also reducing the amount of time you may spend comparing yourself to other people. Your self-worth is not determined by what your online life looks like, but this fact can be an easy one to forget.
The online, social media crazed world is a space that is often toxic, difficult to navigate and hard to ignore, thus creating an ideology that imposes the idea that without it, you are not an interesting or worthy person. Take a break from it every so often, and you may find that you are doing a lot better.
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