You’ve heard a lot about social media impacting mental health negatively. This is true. It has certainly served me for the worst at times, and it’s actually not too hard to identify if you are honest with yourself.

Here are some questions to ask yourself...

Do I feel better after scrolling through my feed?

Do I feel that I would be less satisfied with my life if I was to unfollow everyone?

Do the values instilled in me by my feed make my life better beyond that moment?

Have I become a better friend, parent, partner, or colleague because of my feed?

Sure, you don’t have to take it so seriously, but if you can honestly answer these questions, you will find that the answer to all of these questions could, in fact, be yes.

Some of us fall into patterns of consuming content that reinforces the worst in us. Examples include nihilistic meme pages, polarised political content, and pages dedicated to criticism and cynical views of the world.

I am not suggesting that you curate your feed to show you toxic positivity, but you could populate your feed with content that genuinely brings out the best in you...

Cooking, high-quality information, D.I.Y, career-specific skills, parenting, religiosity, and maybe even a cute baby or two. Wouldn’t some of those make your life better? Could any of us not benefit from learning something new, or consuming uplifting content?

I’m not naive. There is a lot of horrible stuff in the world. More than enough to complain about. But, if you have problems that you care about, tackle them in the real world. Let your media consumption nourish your mind, body, and soul. Then, you can go out and tackle real problems instead of spiralling into depression, anxiety, and nihilism.

Maybe it’s just me... Maybe you are all immune to these outcomes, but for me, I know that real world interactions and genuine self-improvement wins every time.