How to Have a Healthier Relationship with Social Media
Happy Sunday lovelies,
Hope you’ve all had a nice weekend. I’m back! Sorry for the lack of blog posts the past two weeks. I have been having major wifi issues and travelled back to London finally! What have you been up to this week? I’ve been running of course, catching up with friends, baking here and there, and settling back into London life.
For this blog post, I was inspired by InTheFrow to share some of my own tips on enjoying and using social media to its fullest without letting it impact your mental health negatively. (Read her blog post here.) Social Media has become such an important part of our lives, but it shouldn’t run them. They were designed to make us feel connected, inspired, entertained, and informed. We have to remind ourselves that this is why we use social media plaforms and control them rather than letting them control us. Below are my tips for moulding social media into the best it can be for you.
Follow People Who Make You Feel Great
This is a no-brainer, but often hard for a lot of us. Who you follow on social media can greatly impact your experience on the apps. Whether it’s funny meme accounts, friends and family, cute dogs, amazing artists, or anyone else who makes you happy or amazed or excited, that’s who you should be following. Unfollow any account that gives you negative feeling, whether that’s news accounts, workout accounts, or someone who’s just negative all the time. Doing this will greatly increase your social media experience. (Pro tip: you can unfollow people’s content without unfollowing them all together, so it doesn’t look like you’re a bad friend if it’s someone you know personally.)
Set Boundaries or Time Limits
This is one goal I’m working on, especially with Instagram. While it’s easy to spend every waking second on social media, it is important to enjoy real life even more. I recommend setting times aside where you’re not letting yourself reach for your phone. For example, during a movie, walk, while reading, or other real-world activities. Chances are there won’t be anything super important or groundbreaking happening that you can’t wait an hour or so to find out.
Turn off notifications
This one helps me a lot when it comes to using social media less. I turn off a lot of my notifications and 90% of the time have my phone on do not disturb. By sending you notifications, these apps are encouraging you to get back on their apps. I find that I’m a lot less likely to reach for those apps if I’m not seeing notifications pop up every couple minutes.
Hope you enjoyed reading this week’s blog post and maybe learned how to have a bit healthier relationship with social media. Comment down below with one account you absolutely love! Be sure to check back next week for a new post. A special thank you goes to lovely Lucy again for taking these photos for me before Christmas. Seems like an age since we’ve been able to go outside and shoot content, but I’m looking forward to more in the coming months. Anyway, have a great week and remember to follow me on Instagram in the mean time for daily updates!