Most of us are using social media.

I’ll admit I was a little hesitant at first.

What to share? What to hold back?

It wasn’t until my teenage daughter pressured me to get a Facebook account that I made the leap.

What was the hesitation?

I am a private person. I don’t care to flaunt my personal information and photos.

I cringe at desperate attempts for attention. Adding to that, I don’t like bragging or giving off the message that I think my life is somehow better than anyone else’s.

With social media here to stay, how you engage with it matters.

One interesting study showed that people who just scroll - watching the content of others without any interaction (basically pretending they aren’t there), feel worse that people who interact positively with what they are seeing. For example, liking or commenting on a post positively led to more satisfaction and happiness.

How often have you noticed that time has sped by while “doom scrolling” - an hour here, a few minutes there. You start your lunch hour and before you know it, the time is gone. I’ve noticed at my workplace, instead of sitting around the kitchen table chatting, most of us are on social media looking at our phones. Now that reels and videos are the norm, it’s easy to lose an enormous amount of time.

It’s up to you how you spend that time, but it can be helpful to check in with yourself afterward and ask “how am I feeling?”. I’ve had times where I notice I’m feeling unsettled, or judgmental after too much comparing of my life with the highlight reel of everyone else’s. Those feelings are an important signal that it may or may not be working for me.
Another question to ask is directed at the people who matter most to you. How are your online habits impacting them? Are there conversations you aren’t having because one or both are distracted by their phones? I’ve heard a lot of clients tell me they wish their partners would put their phones down and connect with them in person.
Finally, it can be eye opening to take a break from social media and see how you respond. What would it be like to take a few hours off, or even a few days?

Social media can magnify connection if you use it intentionally, or it can interfere with real time connection.

If you find yourself struggling with your relationships because of your relationship to social media or phone use, I am happy to work alongside you.

If you like digging into more information, check out the research of Barrick and colleagues (2020) in their article entitled “The Unexpected Social Consequences of Diverting Attention to our Phones”; or, Verduyn and colleagues (2015) “Passive Facebook Usage Undermines Affective Well-Being: Experimental and Longitudinal Evidence”.