Keeping Yourself Safe On Social Media When You Have Mental Health Problems!

Keeping Safe On Social Media

Social media can have its benefits and its drawbacks, especially for those living with mental health problems.

People with mental health problems may use social media as a way to connect with others and feel less lonely as mental health problems can be isolating in a variety of ways, including being the reason as to why some people have little to no connections in real life.

Despite social media being a great place to connect with others, it can also make us feel worse about ourselves and our lives. We see others successes and we feel guilt that we can't do those things, for example, people who post about graduating university. We see others posting pictures of their friends or partner and talking about how much they love spending time with them and we begin to feel jealous and upset that we don't have those either. All of these issues can cause lack of sleep which can further worsen mental health problems by increasing symptoms such as frustration, lack of concentration, lack of motivation, sadness, anxiety and etc.

So, with that out of the way, let's look at ten ways you can take care of yourself on social media when you live with mental health problems!

1. The first and most important step to protecting yourself is to understand what content upsets you! By doing this, you are then able to move onto the next steps!

2. Muting and blocking words, phrases etc. This one is easier to do on sites such as Twitter as they have a specific function just for that. For other sites such as Instagram, if particular images upset you or cause you to relapse in any way, for example if you have an eating disorder and images of food is a trigger for you, you should definitely learn techniques that will help you to scroll away from the image and keep calm.

3. Avoid or block upsetting content! Very similar to the last step, if particular content such as food, terrorism, politics or riots upset you, don't feel bad for blocking those things from your feed or scrolling past when they appear!

4. If you have health anxiety, try and avoid content that involves self-diagnosis or posts that involve fearmongering. Fearmongering has been a huge issue over the past year with coronavirus, including misinformation about Covid vaccines, so particular content can sometimes be challenging to avoid, so by finding ways to limit your experience with these posts, you may feel much more safer and more relaxed when being on social media.

5. Know that not everything on social media is real or true. Someone could be stating that they are living their best life when in fact they're really not, so take everything with a grain of salt!

6. Moving onto protecting yourself from people, don't get involved in arguments! Whether arguments are directed towards you or a friend, try not to get involved! As hard as it may be to just keep quiet, most of the time it's for the best and it protects you and your mental health from being affected by negative words and experiences.

7. Muting and blocking people can also be very much needed in any circumstance. Your social media account is your social media account and you have a right to protect yourself, so if you want to mute or block someone for any particular reason, go ahead and do it!

8. One thing that may help when it comes to avoiding rude and nasty people is to check their profile first! It can be easy to press that 'follow' button within a few seconds, but physically going onto their profile and having a quick search through it can help you to determine whether someone is as nice as they claim to be or not!

9. If someone is upsetting you, feel free to talk to others about them privately! The reason I say privately is because by posting publicly about someone, you face backlash from their followers which can make the situation worse!

10. 10. Lock/private your account. Not a lot of people like to do this as they fear they may lose followers and friends, but your mental health is what counts the most, so if locking/making your account private helps, I say go for it!

I really hope that these ten tips have been useful to you, and if you can think of anymore ways to protect yourself online, feel free to comment!