I love social media. I also know that I am slightly addicted. How awesome is it that we can share special moments, feelings and happy snaps with friends around the world!? I feel connected knowing that if I am thinking of someone I can jump online and pop them a quick message to say ‘hi’. At the end of the day I can scroll through my feed and see what adventures people have been up to.
But there is a downside to this … it is also easy to have your day or mood altered by someone else’s post. This has happened to me more than once and I’m sure that it has happened to you too. After a lovely day hanging with friends and living the dream I check my feed to see what exciting things might have happened to my buddies and **BAM** there is a post from someone just plain whingeing or a picture of some horrific thing that I really did not need to see. Good mood gone!
My social media is a snapshot into my life. I like to post ‘happy’; jam up feeds with my puppies being adorable and the occasional ‘Which Brooklyn Nine-Nine Character’ are you quiz (Detective Jake Peralta btw). Others use it for different things; venting, sharing how unwell they feel (shaping for a sick day tomorrow?) or reposting chainmail. That’s cool, but it’s not my bag.
Social media has a big effect on us and the posts in your feed have a direct impact on your mood, whether you like it or not. As many are now aware, Facebook did a sneaky experiment on us and the data proves that our mood alters based on the posts in our feed. If our buddies are happy we are happier (yey!) and unfortunately when they are blue, so are we. (You can read more about that here. http://www.medicaldaily.com/are-facebook-emotions-contagious-study-discovers-how-social-media-affects-our-mood-288372 ) The good news, we have control over this.
While we can’t choose our family (sorry guys 😉 ), if you have a cousin who is always, and I mean ALWAYS down in the dumps or an aunt who shares every sad news story, you don’t need to see it. Go right ahead and remove them from your feed, you don’t have to unfriend them. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love them, you just don’t need them injecting their negativity into your happy place.
Likewise if you ‘like’ a page but their style of building awareness is by posting disturbing photos, (which I find really upsetting, especially when they are unexpected and I am not mentally prepared), remove them from your feed.
This doesn’t mean you don’t care but it gives you control over what you choose to see and when you see it. You can always jump onto the page to catch up on what has been going on – when you are ready, not passively receiving something upsetting right before you are about to head off to the land of nod.
You are the master of your mood and happyfi-ing your feed will make a huge difference 🙂