In my previous post, I have mentioned how social media is hurting our mental health, without us even recognizing it. If you haven’t read my post till now, here it is Is Social Media Hurting You?.

Last week’s post was written by keeping in mind about today’s youth and generation. And basically, every social media user can relate to it somewhere. And, if you find yourself in one or the other stressor, just remember there is a solution to everything.

So, today I am here to talk about what to do next, if you are facing any kind of stress or depression due to social media.

Deeper Aspects:

In life, if something is hurting us or bothering us, we generally ignore that thing or people. But, that’s never a solution. I think, being in that situation and controlling yourself from being hurt is the best practice, as this gives you strength to fight and stand tall in every situation.

So, we need to do the same with social media. Do not deactivate or delete all the social media accounts and run away from the reality, better be there and play safe and use social media to impact people’s lives.

And basically, when you look at the deeper aspect, it's not social media that hurts, it’s people on social media that hurt you. For example: When you see your friend’s vacation post, then you think “all the people are enjoying and you are sitting here and working” sort of things. So basically it’s people in social media that are hurting our mental health.

Anyways, if you are suffering from any of the stressors on social media. Below are some steps for social media wellness.

Social Medial Wellness:

Recognize the problem: Firstly, recognize your problem, which category of stressors do you fall into. Even recognizing that social media is harming you is a big step, many don’t recognize it and others don’t accept that it is harming them.

Audit your social media diet: After being aware and recognizing your problem, be conscious and see how you are responding when you see a post or you upload a picture or video. Check how many times you look for your likes and comments on the post or how you feel when you see someone’s post. Be conscious about how these things make you feel, if it makes you feel good, then that’s okay. But if, it doesn’t, move on to step three.

Create a better online experience: After auditing your social media diet, you may be aware of what actually makes you feel low or worse in social media. And guess what? We got a solution now :-p. Just unfollow people, whose post make you feel inferior and make you feel bad about yourself. As Bailey Parnell said in her speech, “You do not have to follow your friends, sometimes your friend or people we have on Facebook or other social media, “suck” online”. As their posts make you feel bad or sad about your life.

Model good behavior: Just like, in real life we are taught to behave and not to bully others and hurt others, same way we should behave online. And, though online we can even teach good behavior and good things to others.

Lastly would like to end this article with an awesome quote by by Ritu Ghatourey, that goes like this, “Social media should improve your life, not become your life”