When You’re Not Alone on Your Social Media

I was scrolling through my social media the other day when I came across an acquaintance’s page. Someone I didn’t really knew, but had frequent contact in the past. Someone with just enough in common to put us in the same circles for a period of time. I got caught up in her photos and posts; vacations and exciting personal news.

And BAM! I was no longer alone. Sitting next to me, looking over my shoulder was the green-eyed jealousy monster. It happened so quickly that I barely even noticed when he arrived. But, I recognized his voice, “Why does she get that?” “It’s not fair.” “Whatever, at least she never….”

And then, it was almost like an audible voice when my wise mind kicked in and said, “This isn’t about her. This is about you and your stuff.” WOAH! What?? Of course this was about her! I was on her page!! Talking about her life!

My wise mind stayed persistent. “This is about your stuff.” The fears and insecurities and disappointments in my life were the lens through which I was viewing her page. And so things that might normally elicit cheers for what a friend or acquaintance was experiencing, became laced with judgments and irritation and frankly a bitter tone.

When I was in grad school, I did a paper that examined the impact of social media on development and self-esteem. There was an interesting study that came across my desk. In it, researchers had participants either spend time on their own profile or scrolling the profiles of others. Those who spent time on their own profiles, creating the image they wanted to portray to the rest of the world, saw a marked increase in self-esteem measurements. Meanwhile, those who spent time scrolling the posts of others without the ability to manage their own, saw a marked decrease.

My paper went on to explore the potential implications of this type of research. BUT, you didn’t come here for a research paper. And like it or not, social media is here to stay and will likely be a part of the daily life of most of us.

So what are we to do? Well, I think there are three keys to “Healthy Scrolling.”

1. Figure out your story and own it.

There’s the story we craft for our social media, and this is important! It’s important that we take time celebrating our lives. It’s important that we feel beautiful and strong and share photos and events that echo this. However, for many of us, this isn’t the part of the story that’s hardest to own.

Instead, it’s the story that we tell ourselves about our fears and insecurities while we’re scrolling through the pages and pages of friends, acquaintances and strangers that fill our feed. These stories, they belong solely to us. They might sound like “It won’t ever happen to me.” “No one loves me.” “I’m not as smart, pretty, kind, successful….” “If only _______ then ______.”

Learn to recognize when these stories become the lens through which you view the world around you. In other words, listen for when YOUR wise mind says “This is about you.” Then, own it. With willing hands and heart speak words of encouragement not only to or about the person that you just viewed through this lens, but towards yourself. Maybe you need to say something like “I have a lot of dreams and I’m frustrated they aren’t coming to fruition right now. AND I am better today than I was yesterday.”

2. Remember the cutting room floor.

I heard it said once that when we compare our lives to those we see in our social media pages it is as if we are comparing our clips from the cutting room floor to those in someone else’s highlight reels. In a world of snapchat and Instagram filters, this movie based metaphor seems fully accurate. It’s as if we take a photoshopped and filtered photos online and compare it to the figure we see in the mirror upon first waking up, morning breath, bed hair and all.

This is important not just because we need to remember everyone has a cutting room floor so that we don’t feel bad about our cutting room floor. It’s because we need to be gracious to those we are viewing. Some times that person who seems to have the perfect family, the perfect faith, the perfect life, is barely hanging on and just really wants to hear someone say, “I see you. I accept you. I love you.”

3. Stop and smell the roses.

Seriously though, it’s ok to set the social media aside for a bit. It’s perfectly normal to not be available for every text or phone call the moment they come in. It’s ok to not know the latest dish on the popular actor who was on tv just last night.

Take a break, and use your five senses to see and experience the world around you apart from your screen. Put your phone on silent (and not vibrate). Connect with people. See what it’s like to give a “thumbs up” to people that you meet and interact with.

I know it sounds hokey, but spending time being intentional IRL, makes a huge difference in how you approach and experience social media. Social media isn’t evil or dangerous in and of itself. AND learning to use it intentionally and in alignment with our wise mind can make all the difference in living the life worth living.