I find social media to be somewhat of a double-edged sword in regards to mental health. It helps one to feel more connected to others but it also brings one into contact with numerous trolls who obviously make stress worse. What is the solution? Well, I think for one thing anything that gives one more control online is helpful. Here are a few ideas that will create boundaries:
1.Limiting the time spent online in any form of social media. Instead of staying on Facebook/Twitter all day perhaps limit to a couple of hours.
2. Using lists on FB or Twitter is also helpful. Lists on Twitter reduce the amount of material to peruse. Lists on FB do the same.
3.Carefully select one’s audience on FB . There are always a few people who are predictably annoying so I tend to limit who I share with
4. I never comment on public pages on FB. The pages that discuss politics are full of opinionated people who will never change their minds, so why bother.
5. I generally don’t engage with trolls. I see many people who however possibly because they can’t tell if the person is serious or not
6. I limit the amount of information to the greatest extent when it comes to the general public and also to so called “friends”. Why help out the all the scammers/ data miners/stalkers.
7. Find groups with like minded individuals who help reduce stress. I joined a few mbti groups for introverts which help me feel less strange and isolated.
8. I tend to not follow posts after commenting due to numerous notices. Lately though FB will give a notice on threads that I deliberately unfollowed. Facebook’s strategy according to one article on Ideapod is to make people spend all day on the site and they do this partly through excessive notifications.
“I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works. The short term, dopamine driven feedback loop we’ve created have destroyed how society works,” former Facebook Vice president of user growth Chamath Palihapitiya, told students at Stanford Graduate Business school, last November.
People with depression have more difficulties than the average person although. Depression is associated with problems with excessive stress and rumination. One negative comment can cause me to waste many hours obsessing over an anonymous and often ignorant person. Years ago one had only to deal with real life people, now one has to deal with people who have an artificial and anonymous identity.
Of course, the down side of increasing control is that one reduces the fun of debate and spontaneity so one doesn’t want to over do it.
Beyond Dysthymia 