We already know the details of the news articles released constantly — our mental health threatened by constant social media use. We feel it, but refuse to acknowledge it consciously. This constant exposure to social media has detrimental effects on our health. Obviously, we don’t want to read these articles unless we’re trying to win an argument. Few can separate themselves from their social media – their personality online – though everyone seems to realize the detrimental effect.
In the articles is information about serotonin and dopamine. How, when you click on a da ding your brain goes ba bing. When you ba boop your brain goes da dum and that is why you cannot escape Instagram. The details are long-winded but the point clear: constant exposure to content of others having impossible amounts of fun or looking/doing impossibly well sends off a rocket of emotions, and our wellness is disrupted.
Forming a Bad Habit
These articles detail the harm of the content on the platforms, not the platforms themselves. People don’t open a blank Instagram app and spiral into self-loathing and depression. The individual’s interests determine the explore and for you pages of various platforms. Spending time on fitness Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, or Reddit will eventually start curating your feeds to similar images. Content that makes people feel insecure, uneasy, or behind often grabs attention. Our mental wellness is hurt by our own weaknesses. Because it has such strong emotional ties to users, people cannot pull away, even if it’s negative. Constant exposure to this content, which we devise at our insecurity’s request, has created a hostile mental environment.
Further, the pressure to present and perform has created anxiety for avid users (which many young people are). They feel they must reach the impossible standards created by their feed and maintained by those they follow. Not being able to reach these standards or thinking about them during our life outside media causes anxiety. Thinking about how you present online before an audience can obviously wreak havoc on your mental state!
Caring for your public’s mental wellness and your own should be fundamental to your online presence. Mental health is a hot topic. It’s an important function that should be well-kept. It’s the creator’s partial aim to create an environment where their viewers feel safe and comfortable. It can improve your traffic with viewers, improve your interaction and it can improve your own mental health.
A Brand’s Impact on Mental Health
Lack of variation has a huge impact on mental health. Seeing the same colors, themes and settings, even if they’re really beautiful, can make people feel they’re in a hospital. To distance yourself from repetition – consider the target audience or niche and what content they’re typically used to. How you can make yourself different from what is standard? This also will help your brand to separate you from other creators.
The brand’s color palette doesn’t have to dominate the page. Highlighted colors and details with a brand’s color palette in focus can vary up home and explore pages.
Another major source of hurt wellness is the constant use of Photoshop or FaceTune on user’s bodies or faces. In the pursuit to appear different, often more conventionally attractive, creators are forming newfound anxiety in viewers. Creating impossible standards that nobody can meet because it doesn’t physically exist, many young people have found themselves feeling less-than for being normal. Young people, trying to find people to relate to, find unrealistic images and feel that this is the norm.
As body positivity grows, it is important to stay away from editing photos beyond what is normal or healthy. When not being open about using it, it can harm people’s self-image and distort their self-perception. People are getting more and more accustomed to what editing looks like and how to spot it. Whole Instagram accounts are dedicated to showing how people edit their pictures and without saying so.
Your regular content might be the music you make, your lifestyle, an outfit, or your product. Step outside this routine, open conversation, and encourage followers to maintain their mental wellness and happiness. It’s another way to make yourself seem more comfortable and closer to your followers. If you speak to them as if they’re your friends, they will view you as a friend. Take a break from your regularly scheduled content to speak with and connect with your viewers!
Improving The Mental Health of Viewers
Discuss what makes you feel better, what you do to maintain your mental health. Post about where you want to be mental, this can break tension your followers may have in their mental health. Simultaneously, this creates a more open environment which can also help improve interactions between you and the circle you’re around.
You’re not a robot! You can take days off and refrain from posting! This sets the standard that you, like your followers, are a human being. Your wellness depends on what you do to make yourself happy. You don’t have to document and share all aspects of your life. Not all of you is for presentation or consumption. This is especially true when you feel pressure to show you’re living a certain life. Time for yourself to recharge and reset is important for you and an audience.
Reading, watching a movie, or just doing what you enjoy in privacy shows the audience that you’re not solely determined by your online presence. You value your personal life and wellness and don’t feel an urge to broadcast everything. There are moments in life just for you, not because they are shameful, but because they are yours. People see how easy it can be to make the first steps towards a better mental environment.
Not everything we do or make has to be posted, not every success must be shared. In the spirit of social media, many have embraced the “document it so you can look back on it” mentality. We don’t consider when we actually will have the time to look back on it. Isn’t it more appetizing to not have any downtime to look back on anything? Everyone can potentially have a lively and fulfilling present. Social media, used sparingly and usefully, can encourage a happy and healthy life. Engaging with friends and strangers online does not have to fully consume us or define how we feel about ourselves.
Your mental health sets the standards for those around you. By showing people who you are, they are changing who they are!
