We’ve made so many advancements in technology over the last 20 years, social media being one of them. Social media has made it possible for people to build their own businesses, express their creativity and stay connected to people they would otherwise never talk to again. As more and more social media platforms were created and kids got smartphones younger and younger, parents and educators started to get concerned about how all of these platforms were affecting the next generations, and they had good reasons to be worried.
In May of this year, the US Surgeon General issued a social media advisory warning of the mental health dangers for children and teens. The advisory report found 95% of kids ages 13 to 17 use social media and determined there were both positive and negative effects on kids. For example, 58% report it helps them feel more accepted, 67% said they have people who can support them through a tough time, and 71% feel like they have a place to show their creative side. The negative effects include exacerbating eating disorders, lowering self-esteem, boosting feelings of sadness and depression, and increasing anxiety.
Yet there are two generations in the workplace right now who have spent their formative years exposed to social media without guidance or tools on how to highlight the positive aspects and mitigate the more negative aspects.
Millennials are the largest generation in the workforce right now (35%), and while they aren’t digital natives, social media has played a pivotal role in their young adult years. According to a report from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Index, major depression diagnoses are rising at a faster rate for Millennials. Millennials report stresses related to money, feelings of loneliness, and burnout.
Generation Zers are digital natives with no memories of life before smartphones and social media and make up 13% of the workforce. As more and more Baby Boomers retire, these two generations are expected to make up over 75% of the workforce by 2030. A new survey found that 42% of Gen Zers have received a mental health diagnosis; the most common is anxiety, followed by depression, ADHD, and then PTSD.
Love it or hate it, social media is here to stay. While technology is a large part of our daily lives, it’s still in its infancy stage in our society, which means there aren’t a lot of guidelines on best practices. This new advisory report is a good first step because it helps change how parents and educators talk to kids about social media moving forward, but it doesn’t address the best way for a young person to manage their relationship with social media today.
Not having guidelines with social media can negatively affect every part of your life, especially at work. It can make you less productive, more anxious and fearful, and make you feel like you have less control over everything, which prevents you from being present and doing your best work.
This means it’s up to individuals to determine how to handle things like social media. If you’re a young person and struggling to manage your relationship with social media, the best thing you can do is: set boundaries.
It’s unrealistic to give up social media completely—that’s not the answer. The answer is setting boundaries around the amount of time you spend on social media, when you scroll, where you scroll, what you think about when you scroll, and how you take care of yourself after you scroll.
Five Ways To Set Boundaries Around Social Media
1. Set A Timer
The very first thing you need to do is start reducing the amount of time you spend on social media, and the best way to do that is to set a timer each time you go on social media. Research has shown you’re more likely to develop depression if you’re on social media for more than 120 minutes a day. Depending on how you like to use social media, you may want to set a timer to go off in 20 minutes so you can go on 6x a day or maybe for longer or shorter stretches of time. Play around with it and see what works best for you.
2. Don’t Doom Scroll
We’re all guilty of it. Up way past your bedtime, the only light in the room emanating from the phone you’ve been cradling for hours, watching video after video, reading article after article, convinced your sore throat is a deadly virus, your neighbors are spies, and you can’t go to bed now because the whole world is falling apart. There is no upside to doom-scrolling. It doesn’t keep you better informed, and it doesn’t help you feel more in control. It actually does the exact opposite. If you’ve been staying under 120 minutes a day, then doom scrolling is impossible.
3. Follow And Don’t Follow Who You Want
You can’t control who is on social media and what people post or don’t post. You can’t control your high school nemesis bragging about her perfect life or your classmate from grad school who seems to be rising the ranks faster than anyone in history talking endlessly about their achievements on LinkedIn. What you can control is who you follow, and if it’s a bad look to unfollow someone, stay friends and mute them.
This is your feed. You decide what you see, so even if a year ago a person or a product or a business didn’t bother you, but now it does, OK, time to mute. Boundaries don’t always stay the same all the time.
4. Focus On Your Thoughts And Feelings
When you’re on social media, stop yourself from time to time and check in with yourself, You can ask, “How do I feel right now?” “Am I enjoying this?” “Am I scrolling because I want to scroll, or am I bored? Or lonely? Or sad?” Social media has become an addiction like alcohol, food, shopping, TV, and video games, and just like any addiction, it’s something you turn to when you’re feeling overwhelmed by life, and you’re trying to escape.
Social media was designed as a way to connect people, spread information, entertain, and learn in short bursts. If you’re on social media looking for more than that, then you have to take a step back and ask yourself, “What do I really need right now because it’s not social media.”
5. Remind Yourself Of The Benefits Of No Social Media
When you’re making any kind of change or building a new habit, it’s easy to get stuck in the mindset of “Ugh, this is going to be terrible. I’m going to have to give up my late-night social media scrolling and hate following and endless TikTok watching. Now I’ll have nothing to do!” Any kind of change is hard, but when you see the benefits of the change and how your life will improve once you make these changes, it makes building the habit a lot easier.
The biggest benefit will be: sleep. This is one of the biggest issues people struggle with, and the reason why people aren’t getting good sleep is they’re on their phones late into the night. They are staring at their phones and then trying to go to sleep and then wondering why they can’t fall asleep right away. It’s because you’re taking in tons of information, usually difficult and disturbing information about our world, and either you eventually pass out from exhaustion, or you’re left lying awake with your mind racing about the things you saw on social media.
The best thing to do is start to develop a nighttime routine. Here’s an example.
Social media isn’t going anywhere, and it’s likely the longer we have it, the more it will be researched. In the meantime, there are things you can do to improve your mental health and overall wellbeing by setting boundaries.
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