Why is your Happiness so Important?
Human happiness drives your entire life. You won't be able to create real relationships, how we treat others, and overall how we live our lives. When you're happy, you are a more positive, motivated and confident person. Spending too much time on social media can make you compare yourself to others, and lead to a low self esteem.
Defining Your Needs:
When thinking of your basic human needs, it really does go beyond food, water, and air. When you take your mental health into account, you'll quickly realize that so many things can increase your mood day to day. These next bullet points contribute to your overall well being, increasing your happiness.
1. Safety and Security
Having a sense of emotional security can help reduce stress, and feelings of anxiety. When your mind isn't filled with the fear of a lack of security, you can place your focus into the smaller things in life that make you happy.
2. Physical Well-Being
As redundant as it sounds, taking care of your physical self is extremely important. From standing up and taking yourself away from your desk to stretch, to eating better, those baby steps contribute to a life of long term fulfillment.
3. Growth and Achievements
Self-love is the best type of love that you can get. If you ever have feelings of being lonely, count all of your own personal achievements. Comparison online can fog your views, so take time daily to recount your milestones, fears you have faced, and problems that you have overcome.
How Does Social Media Affect You?
Social media can have a major impact on how we feel about ourselves day by day. It is a great way to stay connected, but it can also cause serious feelings of insecurity, and make us extremely overwhelmed. Constantly swiping every second to the next highlight of someones life can be staggering. Sitting in bed while watching an old friend on a vacation, or comparing body types, can make anyone feel like they're not good enough. The doom scrolling easily distracts us from what is actually important to us, such as hobbies, sports, activities and even just hanging with family and friends. There are many benefits of social media, but countless disadvantages.
Possible Solutions:
There are many beneficial tactics to solving a mental health crisis when it comes to social media. Some ways include setting time limits, or even scheduling set offline times for yourself.
The average human that uses a cell phone recieves 46 notifications a day, and if you are more active on your phone, that could even mean 46 notifications an hour. Taking a couple seconds to go into your phone settings and turning off notifications from apps that don't benefit you can prevent you from consistently checking your phone
Use the unfollow button! If you feel like that influencer who only posts their lavish lifestyle is slowly but surely affecting you, just unfollow them. Start to interact with posts that benefit your own mental state, and follow accounts that promote well-being.
Below is an infographic with many different ways to "disconnect and reconnect" into the world. There are many more examples, but it takes self-discovery and trial and error to see what works best for you!
Sources:
NMD 200 - Professor Blais
The Social Dilemma - Netflix
https://digitalcommons.harrisburgu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=hu-researchsymposium
https://seis.ucla.edu/news/new-study-looks-at-the-impact-of-screen-free-zones/
https://care-clinics.com/mindful-social-media-use/#:~:text=When%20you%20do%20use%20social,in%20positive%20interactions%20with%20others.&text=Cultivate%20gratitude%20for%20the%20positive%20aspects%20of%20your%20life.
https://allpsychologyschools.com/blog/social-media-psychology/