Is Social Media Affecting Your Mental Health? Here’s What You Can Do To Help

January is over and the next steps of 2020 are well & truly in full swing. It’s the time of year we start to leave the cold and wilderness behind (in our mind anyway) and start dreaming of better days with sunshine, sandy beaches, cocktails & good vibes.

But this is also a time of year when your favourite influencers will be posting their perfectly tanned, muscular and ‘ideal’ bodies and encourage you to work hard so that you can look that good in time for summer.

And that’s just one example of it, every day we are looking at social media posts of dream lifestyles we wish we could live, of bodies we wish we could have and of products that we wish we had - influencer culture truly has us all by the balls.

So we wanted to pass on some steps on how to manage your time on social media to help improve your mindset, from unfollowing a few negative people to completely getting rid! It’s time to remember to live in the real world sometimes, because nothing is ever as perfect as it may look online.

#1 – Remember Instagram vs reality

Those perfect images aren’t always what they seem and the Instagram vs reality trend that became popular towards the end of last year showed us exactly that. The perfect photoshopped lives of influencers images next to the images that were probably more of an accurate representation of that moment, two fun accounts to follow to give you those daily reminders are @chessieking & @saggysara - time to ruin your perfect feed, boo hoo.

#2 – Unfollow influencers

What seems like an impossible and heartbreaking task will actually be extremely liberating for you, we promise! Even if you do this for a short while, the difference you will feel when scroll through the feed will be amazing when you are not under constant pressure to conform! Instead, follow accounts that actually offer you something other than guilt because you ate the whole choccy bar, au revoir Kylie Jenner!

#3 – Leave your phone downstairs at night

Okay this one could be tricky if you need it for an alarm, so how about leaving it outside the room as you’re about to go to bed on the landing. Not only will you defo be up and out of bed on time to turn off the alarm, you will have managed to get tucked in and actually go straight to sleep without scrolling through Facebook aimlessly, what are we even looking for? When will we stop? Nobody truly knows...

#4 – Try a Social Media detox

You levelled up, time to beat the boss! Once you’ve unfollowed influencers for a bit, why don’t you sack it all off completely? The benefits of social media detox’s have been widely reported, check out some sciency stuff behind it here. Less anxiety, better mornings, more free time & mindfullness are just some of the benefits of giving up the ‘gram for 7 days, 30 days or if you’re totally hardcore, a year! Remember to speak to professionals like at Psymplicity if you feel you need serious help.

Here’s to a happy & healthy 2020!

Up Next, In Memory Of Lee Alexander McQueen