Social media can be a double-edged sword when it comes to affecting your mental health. There are many reasons why social media is good for you, such as: B: Stay in touch with family and friends, follow useful content that motivates and inspires you, and if you spend your time browsing social networks, you can enjoy these positive benefits and content that interests you.
On the other hand, unintentionally using social networks and focusing on unnecessary content for a long time can have negative effects on your mental health, such as: b: anxiety, depression, low self-confidence, and loneliness.
Additionally, browsing social media before bed can negatively affect the quality and quantity of sleep, leading to fatigue and lower productivity.
However, there are steps you can take to control what you focus on and prevent social media from negatively affecting your mental health by:
1- Beware of adding likes and comments:
Social media platforms use complex algorithms to show you content tailored to your preferences based on your past interactions with previous posts and other factors, allowing these algorithms to predict the type of content you would like to see.
These interactions include the types of content you search for, the time you spend on certain posts, and the posts you like or comment on. There are also platforms like: TikTok, which is known to collect massive amounts of user data to predict what type of content will grab your attention and keep you on the site for a long time. However, you can use this to your advantage by only engaging in inspiring, informative, and educational content.
2- Unfollow accounts that offend you:
When you see depressing and harmful content on social media, or a post that encourages negative or unrealistic thoughts, it can affect your mental health and self-esteem. However, you can quickly fix this problem by unfollowing these accounts, which gives you more control over what is shown to you.
3- Block and report harmful content:
Most social media platforms allow you to block and report accounts or posts that contain objectionable and harmful content, and provide you with options to report a specific post or account or to block the account. This helps reduce the visibility of inappropriate content when browsing social media.
4- Limit the following news and political topics related to rapid weight loss:
There are certain types of seemingly harmless content that can have a long-term impact on your mental health, such as: b. News, politics and topics related to nutrition that can help you lose weight fast.
For example: seeing a large number of posts about the latest diets and fast weight loss methods can lead to comparing your body type against unrealistic standards that are advertised as ideal body parameters. As a result, eating becomes a way to lose weight instead of fueling your body, which negatively affects your mental health and can cause you to lose confidence in your appearance and body shape.
On the other hand, constantly monitoring news on negative and controversial topics can become a source of stress and anxiety.
There is no doubt that it is important to keep up to date with the latest news. However, you should be aware of how following such content makes you feel and regulate what you follow on social media accordingly to minimize the negative impact on your mental health.
5- Use hashtags to find useful content:
Follow accounts that provide content that inspires and motivates you. There are countless educational and positive social media accounts that you can follow to access quality content that can improve your mental health.
One of the best ways to access certain types of content is to search for specific hashtags, for example: you can type (#learn_english) into Instagram in-app search tool and follow the search hash to find your next content that can be sourced from various sources.