Ways to mitigating social media use

Is Social media ruining our lives?

It certainly has influenced just about everything in our lives and can be a blessing or a curse.

Whether you scroll and post regularly or just peek and comment on occasion, you have an online identity.

It can be challenging to manage our individual online presence with what we engage with and how we choose to share.

There was a period of time that I can honestly say that I was addicted to watching Youtube shorts on my phone. Sometimes, I would raise the volume without noticing that others could hear all the jokes I was listening to. I was also oblivious to the fact that I was spending hours at night in bed watching them that I was not paying attention to my wife. Sometimes, I would burst out laughing and paid no attention to the fact that it was irritating my wife. She did complain occasionally, but she had her own addiction - Tik Tok.

My wife and I sat down one day and decided on rules to handle our frequent usage of social media. We came up with times that we can use it at home and even decided that phones do not come to bed with us.

It worked for about a month!

Social media can be a great tool for keeping in touch with people and maintaining a sense of connectedness. However, it can also be especially harmful.

5 tips for managing the use of Social media

Establish boundaries.

• Set time limits and the appropriate amount of time that you want to be on social media.

• Ask yourself what purpose social media serves for you.

• When interacting with people online, it is important to take things slow. Relationships build over time. Remember that.

• Pay attention to your emotions and comfort level, and proceed from there.

Avoid Comparing

• Look into your Feed and unfollow people that make you feel uncomfortable.

• Appreciate the good things in your own life

• Confront your self-criticism with compassionate self reflection

Identify your accomplishments and goals

• Recognize that what people are Instagraming, tweeting, and Facebooking about are the highlights of their lives. On Social media, you are only seeing the high points, not the low points.

• Take pride in devising ways to achieve your goals and accomplishments and realizing that your goals may be different from others. Your achievements will come.

Understand that everyone is struggling with something.

• It is not realistic to believe that everyone on social media has the perfect life. They show only a small part of their lives.

• Every generation feels like they have it tougher than the generation before them. As there are so many parts to life, it is unrealistic to think that anyone has the perfect life with no struggles.

• If you haven't achieved the goal you set out to when you were 20 years old, be patient. It is achievable.

Find a screen free hobby

• There are plenty of hours in a day and even more hours in a week. Think of something that you could enjoy spending time on. It could be joining a sewing class, golf, hiking. Anything that takes your mind off the phone screen and it's apps for an hour or more is always a good start.

• Setting aside a time or day for self care. This could come in the form of a spa day, massage, meditation, or just picking up and reading a good book. Commit to having this done at least a few times in a week or month.

Decide how often you want to be on Social media. Be realistic about it. Set time limits. Think you can be on your phone and the apps twice in a day? Commit to set times in the day and stick to it.

"Social media is like crack-immediately gratifying and hugely addictive"-Gary Vaynechuk

"Despite a string of controversies and the public’s relatively negative sentiments about aspects of social media, roughly seven-in-ten Americans say they ever use any kind of social media site – a share that has remained relatively stable over the past five years," according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults.

Social media has both negative and positive impact. People have various needs for it. Identify how well you are able to manage it and decide for yourself how it affects your mental health.

Is social media a blessing or a curse? Leave a comment below this post.