Hey you,
Welcome or welcome back to Screenspire. I hope that April is opening up some new opportunities for growth, reflection, and mindfulness for you. Spring always does this for me.
Can I be honest with you for a second? I find social media to be utterly terrifying. Am I being dramatic, or do you feel the same way :’)
I find it more pleasant to just log off and forget about social media, but maybe that’s because — as I mention in Screenspire’s origin story — I’m fairly new to having an active social media account. The thing that draws me back to social media time and time again is my passion for discussing digital wellness with you, learning about the things that are exciting you in your lives, and building our virtual village in which we’re all invested in and supportive of each others’ digital wellness journeys. The community engagement opportunities on sites like Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, etc., make social media an energizing space to be in.
Before re-launching Screenspire this year, I took a 2-year-long hiatus from my personal social media accounts, so something that has occupied a lot of my thoughts since late 2023 has been: how do you return to social media after spending more than a year away? Should I explain my absence to the people I’m connected with, or do I just create a new post and pretend that nothing happened? Let me know if you’ve had to deal with this dilemma before, because I’m a bit lost lol.
Anyhoo, I was fairly active on social media between 2020 and 2021, back when our world entered lockdown and social media became a primary channel for connecting with others. I started out as a reluctant user — believing that social media was a distractor and a waste of time — and grew to see how much of a fun and powerful creative outlet it could be. I entered a flow and started to enjoy the community and creativity social media offered.
Then at some point, my relationship with social media shifted. I felt like my online engagement was starting to be driven by a pressure to post something new everyday instead of being sparked by a genuine passion for connecting with others.
I also found myself using social media in ways that made me feel overwhelmed and anxious. As a new social media user, I felt like a whole new world of thrilling digital opportunities had opened up to me, and it was all so novel and stimulating and fresh that I overindulged and allowed unhelpful content and messages to slip into my life.
Can you relate?
So in 2022, I plugged out to reflect on my social media habits — what worked for me, what didn’t, and what I wanted to get out of my experience. Around this time, I was hired to work as the Youth Engagement Workshops Consultant at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop (the nonprofit organization responsible for the production of Sesame Street). It was a career-defining experience that deepened my love for an organization I have long admired.
As part of my role, I discussed the impact of social media with adolescent fellows from the By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences Youth Fellows program (a program convened to provide adolescents across the USA with a opportunities to build community around key issues in youth media) and adolescent podcasters from This Teenage Life (a podcast [celebrating its 5 year!] established to give teens a platform for candid discussions about teenage life). As I listened to these young people authentically share their experiences as social media users, I learned that it wasn’t just me who was battling social media setbacks…teens and adults everywhere were dealing with the effects of common social media practices that really didn’t serve them but were so, so easy to fall into.
That brings me to today’s post.
I’ll bet that somewhere in your screentime, there’s at least one social media use habit that’s taking a toll on your self-esteem and relationships, and diminishing your overall sense of peace and purpose. Maybe after using social media for a bit, you feel so anxious that you can’t do any meaningful work afterwards. Maybe scrolling through your TikTok feed leaves you feeling so unsure of yourself that you question your ability to fulfill any meaningful goal you’ve ever had.
Maybe you have some idea of what your problematic social media use habits are but just can’t figure out a way to ditch them once and for all. Or maybe you don’t feel that you have a specific poor habit, but you just feel drained or anxious after using social media. I feel you.
Today, I’m sharing 7 social media use habits to ditch today in order to prevent social media from making you lose your spark, and 7+ research-informed, health-promoting habits to replace them with. I hope to help you identify, label, and eliminate habits that aren’t serving you so that we can all relieve the pain, stress, and distraction they’re causing and begin engaging with social media in ways that add energy and light to our lives.
Social media shouldn’t be the place where our energy and dreams go to die. Let’s change things so that we can use social media to amplify and broadcast our ideas and creative intentions in wayas that really add value to our lives, strengthen our relationships, and add new creative energy to our daily rhythms. Starting today.
All the tips I’m sharing today come from peer-reviewed media effects research articles (which means that the articles have been read, evaluated, and reviewed by multiple scholars with expertise related to the media effects research).
Media effects research: research that explores the effects of media content, messages, and platforms. Media effects research is carried out using a wide range of methods, including:
Surveys: research conducted by having a specific group of individuals complete a questionnaire or self-report interview.
Experiments: examining the relationship between multiple variables in a controlled setting
Interviewing individuals who use media
Content analysis: analyzing various media content
Archival research: examining older, historical documents (such as newspapers and physical advertisements
Focus groups: gathering a group of individuals who are interviewed to explore a certain topic
You can learn more about media effects research here
Filling our feeds with a very limited range of physical features
The physical features and identities we see in media have a potent and enduring influence on how we think about, feel about, and value our own physical features and identities.
Visit any social media site, streaming platform, or other media platform created to entertain or advertise to an audience, and you’ll find that certain body types, facial features, hair textures, age groups, and identities appear everywhere while others are barely represented at all. Ever wonder why that is?
While media and technology industries are taking steps to become more inclusive, our society continues to uphold definitions of “beauty” that are steeped in prejudices with deep historical roots. The practice of uplifting certain physical features as ideal and labelling others as deviant is a way to enforce forms of prejudice such as racism, texturism, featurism, ageism, weight bias, ableism, sexism…the list goes on.
Racism: Discrimination whereby a group of individuals of a certain race are disadvantaged and mistreated on the basis of their race by individuals, policies, and other systemic factors.
Texturism: Discrimination whereby individuals who share a certain hair texture (usually coarser or tightly curled hair, as is common in many Black communities) are disadvantaged or mistreated on the basis of their hair texture. Texturism can happen anywhere, and can take the form of microaggressions (like a manager offhandedly mentioning that a Black intern’s hair makes her look like a cavewoman).
Featurism: Discrimination whereby individuals who have certain facial features are disadvantaged or mistreated on the basis of their features. Featurism often manifests as a set of negative attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes directed to individuals who do not have euro-centric features..
Ageism: Stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination towards individuals on the basis of their age. While young people can experience ageism, ageism often manifests as a set of negative attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes directed to older adults.
Weight Bias / Weight Stigma: Discrimination whereby individuals who have a certain body shape or size are disadvantaged or mistreated on the basis of their body appearance. Weight bias often manifests as a set of negative attitudes, beliefs, and stereotypes directed to individuals who have larger bodies.
Ableism: Discrimination whereby individuals who have disabilities or limb differences are disadvantaged or mistreated on the basis of their disabilities and limb differences.
Sexism: Discrimination whereby individuals of a certain sex are disadvantaged or mistreated on the basis of their sex.
Upholding a limited definition of beauty can also be a way to manufacture needs within viewers and users of media, by making us believe that we need to purchase certain products or services in order to experience the hallmarks of a fulfilling life.
Physical features that are considered to be “ideal” appear more frequently in media, while those that deviate from the ideal appear less frequently (underrepresentation), are inaccurately depicted (misrepresentation), or are left out altogether.
As a result, many of the beautiful physical features we see in our classrooms, in our communities, in our families, and in our own mirrors never make it into the digital spaces where we spend over one third of our days. Overtime, this can change how we see ourselves, cause us to evaluate ourselves harshly, and subtly make us value beauty more than other attributes (like intelligence, health, and social connection) in ourselves and others. I know from experience that this can lead us down some dark paths.
Underrepresentation: the lack of accurate and fair portrayals of individuals from certain groups in media content, relative to their prevalence in real-life populations.
Misrepresentation: inaccurate and disrespectful representations of individuals from certain demographic groups, including representations that are heavily based on stereotypes.
There are a few psychology theories that describe how seeing a limited range of bodies in media impacts our perception of our own bodies, but the one that I feel most clearly explains this effect is Cultivation Theory. Here’s a breakdown:
Cultivation Theory
According to Cultivation theory, media changes how we think about our bodies in three stages:
Stage 1: Repeated, extensive viewing of media content leads to a change in our understanding of what is common in real life: When we repeatedly view media content that features a very limited range of glorified physical features, we gradually come to believe that these features are more common in real life than they really are, and that physical features that are absent in media content are less common in real life than they really are.
For example, if all of the female students in all of our favourite dramedy series are thin, able-bodied women with light skin and long, straight hair, we may eventually come to believe that these physical features are what the “normal” or “average” teen girl looks like in the real world, even if we go to school in a multicultural and multi-ethnic setting.
Stage 2: Internalization and shifting attitudes / beliefs: When we repeatedly see that certain physical features in media are associated with specific traits (e.g, characters who meet societal beauty standards are always the kindest characters, while those that do not meet beauty standards are always villains) or outcomes (e.g, only the tall and muscular characters end up in happy relationships), our attitudes and values begin to shift so that we believe these messages. We start to believe that there is a “perfect” body that we must achieve in order to live a happy life. We begin to compare our own bodies and features to the ideals that are presented in media to see how we match up.
At the same time, beauty gradually becomes THE thing that matters most to us. Things like our intelligence, kindness, community engagement, social impact, personality, and health take a backseat as we start to believe that beauty is a more important measure of our worth than anything else.
Stage 3: Behavioural Change: After we spend a long time comparing our bodies to the ideals presented in media, we become dissatisfied with our bodies and seek out ways to modify our bodies in order to get the ideal. This can lead to some dark places including negative thoughts about ourselves (“I will never be loved.” “I’m worthless.” “I look like a freak.”), physical health challenges, extreme body modification, eating disorders, and gradually isolating ourselves from others.
So one habit to ditch is the habit of only engaging with users and content that reflect the “ideal” physical features in our society. I know that this can be hard because we live in a media culture that pushes youthfulness, thinness, eurocentric standards, and being able-bodied on us.
But I encourage you to find, follow, and engage with accounts and content that feature a wide range of physical features, body types, abilities, and age groups.
Seeing a limited range of body types and appearances limits our beliefs about beauty and appearances. Seeing a diverse range of physical features expands our beliefs about beauty and empowers us to cultivate more holistic value systems.
Finding and following accounts that authentically depict individuals with a wide range of physical features, body shapes, identities, and abilities is freeing and transformative. It makes our social media feeds more closely reflect the real worlds we live in instead of making us believe that “everyone but us” has a “perfect” physical appearance. A curated feed featuring diverse physical appearances and identities can also inspire us to spend more time loving the unique features we’ve been given instead of trying to change them.
I also find it helpful to follow and engage with accounts that celebrate the body from a functional, spiritual, or scientific lens instead of just from an aesthetic lens. These accounts — like human biology accounts, health-focused non-profits, healthy aging accounts, or accounts from within different spiritual communities — help us cultivate a holistic understanding of our bodies and remember just how strong, amazing, and miraculous our bodies are. For example, I enjoy accounts that regularly post content about how our bodies are not just things to adorn, but are also the vehicles for our souls and character to reside in. Or accounts that show people doing cool things with their bodies (like gymnastics, dance, running, calligraphy, and crocheting).
It’s so refreshing to remember that our bodies offer us a unique experience of our time on earth that nothing else can match. When we only regard the value of our bodies as having aesthetic or even sexual appeal, we miss out on the chance to fully inhabit our bodies and live out the unparalleled experiences we can have through them.
Making the wrong types of social comparisons.
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
This is a quote that I firmly believe in. However, in the context of digital wellness, a more accurate statement would be: some forms of social comparison are thieves of joy, while others are sources of light and direction.
Humans are social creatures, which means that we engage in social learning (we learn by observing others). Social learning helps us to survive and move through each developmental stage of life, academics, and career. As infants, we learn how to walk and talk by observing and listening to the adults in our lives. As we get older, we refine our abilities to communicate with others by learning context-specific social etiquette, new vocabulary, body language, and even fashion by observing our peers and teachers.
Social comparison (the act of comparing ourselves to others) is a form of social learning.
Social Comparison Theory explains that social comparison helps us learn. It states that we compare ourselves to individuals in our social environments (like our social media feeds) in order to get a sense of what our beliefs and abilities are. We compare ourselves to others to understand our place in the world, and to gauge whether our behaviours are appropriate or not based on where we wish to be.
There are forms of social comparison that harm us, and some that help us. Knowing the difference is the key to protecting our peace and purpose as we use social media. Here are three forms of social comparison that we should avoid:
Comparing our Abilities
NOTE: In psychological research, the mental health effects of comparing our abilities to others’ abilities hasn’t been extensively explored yet; in writing this post, I could only find one study covering it. However, this one study was so, so fascinating and directly applicable to our lives that I had to share it with you.
A 2018 study by Dr. Chia-chen Yang and colleagues found that when we compare our abilities to others’ abilities, we experience rumination (engaging in excessive, repetitive thinking about something that interferes with other activities) and distress. Conversely, when we compare our opinions to others’ opinions, we engage in self-reflection instead of rumination.
The researchers explain this finding as follows: when we compare our abilities to others’ abilities, we are engaging in a form of social comparison that is judgemental and competitive. We’re trying to see who is better or worse in a given domain. This competition causes us to see others as opponents instead of allies.
Conversely, when we compare our opinions to others’ opinions, we’re engaging in a form of social comparison that is motivated by curiosity, and a desire to learn about others. We see other people as role models, friends, and individuals to learn from. The lack of competition associated with this approach allows us to appreciate ourselves and others, regardless of how we stack up.
Upward Comparison
Most researchers broadly categorize social comparison in one of two ways:
Upward comparison occurs when we compare ourselves to individuals we perceive to be “better” than us in a given domain (e.g, higher grades, more beautiful, more popular)
Downward comparison occurs when we compare ourselves to individuals we perceive to be “worse off” than us in a given domain
Most of the research out there tells us that making upward social comparisons makes us feel worse about ourselves, and that people who make more frequent upward comparisons tend to experience fewer positive feelings (like joy, satisfaction with their lives). Something I find really compelling is the research finding that social media’s effects on our wellbeing partially depends on the extent to which we make upward comparisons between ourselves and others while spending time on social media platforms. In other words, the extent to which social media benefits or harms us depends on whether we engage in upward comparisons or not.
We must understand that social media platforms are hyper-social environments: they offer an intense and almost infinite number of opportunities to view and interact with others. As soon as we log in, we’re inundated with a deluge of different individuals who — for the most part — are depicting themselves in positive contexts (e.g. new jobs, relationships, fun events, good angles). In these hyper-social environments, our brains detect myriad opportunities for social learning, and immediately — and almost instinctively — move towards making comparisons. But due to the widespread presence of positive content, we tend to make upward comparisons.
Identification vs Contrast
Some research suggests that our minds engage in one of two processes when we compare ourselves to others:
Identification: where we identify similarities between ourselves and the people we’re comparing ourselves to. We tend to relate to the target of our comparison.
Contrast: where we focus on the differences between ourselves and the people we’re comparing ourselves to.
When we make upward comparisons and engage in contrast-centered thinking (so, identifying the differences between us and those we perceive to be better off), we experience greater stress.
If you feel compelled to engage in social comparison, here are some approaches to practice instead:
Practice approaching others with curiosity and a desire to learn from them, instead of viewing them as opponents to beat in the game of life. Prioritize community over competition, and consider stepping away from environments that reinforce competition.
Focus on and celebrate the things that you share with others, instead of the gaps between your experiences. For example, if you’re on Linkedin, and notice that someone who graduated at the same time as you is working at your dream company, instead of beating yourself up for not being where they are, become inspired that someone in your exact shoes made it to where you’d like to be one day! Consider connecting with them to learn more about their journey, and to bond over your shared university experiences.
Curate a list of things you love about yourself that you can come back to when times get tough and you find yourself making harmful comparisons. I think that harmful comparisons have the deepest and most enduring effects on our moods and self-esteem when they go unchallenged. You can kill off harmful social comparisons before they root themselves in your mind and heart by curating a list of things you love about yourself, or things you’re proud of that you can have nearby (e.g, in your office, in your locker, an electronic note pinned to your desktop) and say to yourself when you feel tempted to make an unhelpful comparison.
Using social media without clarifying our intentions first
I’m sure we’ve all had moments where we’ve opened up a social media app with no idea of what exactly we hope to see, but just planning to scroll until we find something that piques our interest. Just in it for the vibes. I’m so guilty of this that I should be thrown into digital wellness prison.
When we do this, we’re engaging in passive social media use. Research tells us that when we engage in passive social media use, it’s easier for us to make choices that don’t support our purpose or peace. These include things like making more upward social comparisons, encountering content that makes us feel worried, or filling up our time with content that doesn’t add value to our lives which can lead to feeling overwhelmed and developing eye strain.
Passive Social Media Use: using social media in ways that involve more consuming than creating, and that do not involve directly engaging with others.
Active Social Media Use: using social media in ways that promote interactions with others, and / or original creation of self-expressive content.
Eye Strain: a group of symptoms such as headaches, blurry vision, and watery eyes that occur as a result of prolonged use of screen-based devices
Instead, before opening up a social media app or browser tab, take a step back and establish even a general idea of what you want to get out of social media. This will give you the power to identify more of what you want to see on social media instead of opening a site and wandering.
One of my go-to social media habits is what I like to call entering social media from the “back door:” nstead of opening up a social media app or website in a way that leads me to my main feed or homepage (where all kinds of content can appear), I use an internet search tool to look up the specific social media page or account I wish to visit, and click on the link that will allow me to enter the site through that page or account. When I use an account or page that I like as my safe landing point while I decide what to do next on social media, I engage with social media in ways that support my health.
Social Media Feed: An interactive, continuously-updating library of multimedia content (e.g, videos, Shorts, music, photos) that is shown to users of social media sites when they enter the site. Often, a social media feed contains content from creators and accounts you follow. However, it is also common to see content from accounts that you don’t follow or engage with.
Doom scrolling that causes distress
Doom scrolling can happen anywhere: on social media platforms with endless scroll features (hence the scrolling part of doom scrolling), news websites, photo-sharing sites, and any media platforms that offer information.
We don’t always engage in doom scrolling intentionally. Sometimes, it just happens! Have you ever accidentally engaged in doom scrolling by clicking on and reading a single negative story, which encouraged another one to pop up in your feed (which you also clicked)? The algorithm listens for our rhythms and sends us more of what we seem to engage with.
But there are times when we doom scroll on purpose. There are many sad things happening around the world, and it’s normal, appropriate, and valid to want to stay on top of them. Coming to terms with the realities of these events can evoke legitimate feelings of worry, fear, grief, anxiety, disgust, and anger. These are all normal emotions to feel in response to upsetting news or content.
Doom Scrolling: the act of accessing media content that contains depressing and negative information.
But immersing ourselves in distressing content for long periods of time — especially if we’re reading about things we can’t immediately solve or impact — can affect our mental and physical health, and cause chronic stress. This stress can influence many aspects of our lives.
Chronic stress can disrupt our sleep!
Viewing and reading scary or upsetting content can make us develop feelings of distress that last into the night, which may make it more likely that we’ll have nightmares. This can prevent us from achieving restorative sleep.
Even if we don’t have nightmares after viewing distressing content, experiencing feelings of fear and distress can prevent us from settling into a good night’s sleep, which can impair us the next day.
And then there’s the effect it has on our general emotional wellbeing.
Repeated and frequent exposure to distressing media content, such as content depicting violent events, is linked to the experience of psychological distress and post-traumatic symptoms (such as having nightmares and feeling cut off from others after viewing the content).
Instead, take breaks. And seriously assess the pros and the cons of accessing distressing content. When you’re faced with a choice of viewing graphic or otherwise distressing content, think: will this content really help me to get a better understanding of this issue than another form of media content would? Will it mobilize me to take meaningful action to solve this problem? Or, will it cause me more harm than good?
Having a cluttered social media network
Be honest: have you ever tried to find your lost house keys or phone charger in a messy room? I’m sure we’ve all been there. It’s one of the most frustrating mundane experiences we can have.
Just as it’s harder to find a lost item in a messy room than in a clean room, it’s frustratingly challenging to find social media content we genuinely love when our social media feeds and Following list are cluttered with accounts and content that don’t align with your interests or values. When we organize our space so that the things that matter most to us are easiest to access, we avoid having to waste time searching for them.
When we follow and engage with a mix of accounts and people, some that energize us to be our best and some that just take us down, our feeds broadcast mixed messages to us, leaving us feeling overwhelmed or drained.
When we only follow and engage with accounts and content that add value to our lives, our feeds reflect this energy and beam it back to us so that we feel entertained, informed, or inspired when we log off for the day.
Instead of having a cluttered social media feed, curate the lists of accounts you’re following or subscribed to, so that you’re only engaging with the accounts that add value to your life.
Take 10 minutes to do this easy and empowering activity with me.
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Pick any social media platform (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn) and reflect on the things you’ve seen on your feed in the last two weeks. You can open up the feed if you need to jog your memory. How does the content in your feed make you feel? If you’re someone who perhaps has avoided certain social media feeds out of fear of seeing something distressing, what is it that you’ve been avoiding? Why?
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Take as much time as you need and go through the list of accounts and people you’re following. If you are in the right frame of mind to do so (or you have someone supportive beside you to bring you back to center as you do this), check out their profiles and see what they post about. Does it resonate with you? Does it make you feel full, excited about life, joyful, and energized? Or does it make you feel anxious, drained, angry, or scared?
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Unfollow, mute, or unsubscribe from any accounts that evoke negative feelings. This will discourage the social media algorithm from bringing content from these accounts into your feed.
Your health is worth so much more than any number of followers, or staying on top of the latest trends or events. Life and energy are too short and finite to waste on resources that deplete us.
You deserve to find joy and energy in every digital space you engage with, and cultivate social media experiences that amplify all the energy and hard work you bring to life offline. Not just sometimes but all the time. Otherwise, is being on social media really worth it?
Getting Caught up in Others’ Journeys
On social media, we see so many individuals who are doing things that fascinate us. I think that social media is one of the only spaces in which we have a cornucopia of idealistic images at our fingertips that reflect to us — in full colour — the specific life we one day wish to inhabit. This can be equal parts inspiring and discouraging. While this can inspire us to explore new experiences in our own lives, it can quickly become noise that causes us to get swept up in others’ dreams, and forget or become discouraged about what truly matters to us.
After spending a lot of time on social media viewing others’ stories, journeys, and experiences, we start to dissociate from our own values and true desires and begin craving what we see online. For you, this may look and feel like:
Adopting an intense, emotional desire for something we never wanted before.
Suddenly feeling like we’re “behind in life” or running out of time (e.g, “I haven’t accomplished anything.”, “I’m running out of time.”, “I’m scared of turning 20 / 30.”)
Suddenly feeling intense loneliness, despite feeling satisfied with the quality and quantity of our friendships and other relationships before
Having a sudden, intense belief that buying a certain product (e.g, outfits, food and drinks, equipment, cosmetics) or service (e.g, subscriptions, travel) that we haven’t researched ourselves will solve a core issue in our lives (this is rarely the case)
Beginning to alter our goals to fit a lifestyle we see online
Having a sudden deep and driving desire for social approval
If this happens, I want you to stop whatever you’re doing. Close the lid of your laptop or turn off your device screen. Put the phone or tablet where you can’t see it.
Find a space where you can really connect with your thoughts and tune out the rest of the world. This may be on the floor in your living room, on your bed, in a nature-embedded space…
Get out a piece of paper and a writing tool (I recommend using physical writing tools to put some distance between you and screens)
Write out:
5 things that matter most in life to you
5 things that make you feel a glowing sense of joy inside (it could be a favourite place, a favourite song, a person, a cause you’re passionate about, an event…anything but it MUST FILL you with a heavy, internal glow and a feeling that living life is worth it as long as you get to experience that thing)
Review the list on your own, and ask yourself if the social media content (e.g, TikTok, short, Story) you saw really matters in the context of your true goals and desires. Does seeing the other person achieve their goals prevent you from achieving yours? The answer is most likely no. Grounding exercises like this can give us reprieve from the noise of others’ voices, and reacquaint us with our authentic voice.
Having a Fixed Mindset
A psychologist at Stanford University named Carol Dweck proposed the idea that the beliefs and attitudes we have about our abilities can influence whether we genuinely believe that we can achieve our goals, and whether we take action to achieve these goals.
She proposed that there are two mindsets (or systems of attitudes and beliefs about our abilities) that we can have:
A Fixed mindset: where we believe that our intelligence, abilities, skills, and talents cannot be changed. We believe that anyone who has ever achieved success, been loved, or found fulfillment was born into unchangeable traits that destined them for success.
A Growth mindset: where we believe that our intelligence, abilities, skills, and talents can be improved with hard work. We believe that there are both obvious and unconventional resources and practices that we can adopt to hone our skills and move towards our goals.
When we live with a growth mindset, we:
are comfortable with not being perfect or successful on our first try
are more likely to try new things
are more curious and playful
are more likely to be inspired by others, seeing them as teachers to learn from instead of as competition to beat
create community instead of competition
When we were younger, we learned that our worth was tethered to our successes. Environments like schools, sports teams, and (sadly) some family environments operated such that we had to succeed in order to be praised (e.g,. “You’re so smart!’), be appreciated by our peers (e.g, being one of the first students to be selected by sports teams at recess), or to receive affection from our loved ones. As a result of the conditional praise and acceptance we received in these environments, some of us grew up believing that we should only engage in the opportunities that we are 100% guaranteed to succeed in, and that if we fail, we are failures for life.
Often, social media platforms are environments of conditional praise. They encourage us to adopt trends, engage in certain lifestyle practices (regardless of whether they align with our actual wants or not), or make certain posts in order to receive likes, praise-filled comments, and followers. It can be hard to separate our worth from our achievements in these spaces.
Adopting a growth mindset by believing that we can all grow towards our goals prevents us from judging ourselves and others so harshly, especially on social media platforms.
Here are some things you can do today to cultivate a growth mindset:
Change your language: Avoid using linguistic absolutes like “always” and “never”, which suggest that things don’t change. Instead, using more balanced language like “much of the time” or “rarely” can help you to more realistically assess the situation you’re talking about and help you to appraise it in a way that sparks positive action on your part.
Set SMART Goals: Set and achieve a SMART goal of any size each day. Research tells us that when we achieve a goal of any size, we increase a motivational fuel inside of us called “self-efficacy”: our belief in our ability to perform well and achieve desired results in a given setting. The more we set and achieve smaller goals, the more we trust ourselves to eventually achieve big things as well. Additionally, the stronger our self-efficacy is, the stronger our conviction that we can learn and grow, no matter what our starting point is.
Immerse yourself in environments that support skill-development without competition: I know that many of you are in environments where you’re being evaluated and graded against others. While it’s necessary for some of us to participate in these environments, we can remind ourselves that we are worth more than grades, income, or followers by engaging in experiences where we are valued for our efforts instead of our outcomes. For example, taking up a fun, low-stakes dance class where you are encouraged simply to move instead of perfectly performing a dance routine can help you to find fun in the experience of learning, instead of fixating on being “perfect” or “the best.” Other hobbies can provide a similar outlet. Some ideas include:
Singing in a community choir
Volunteering at a soup kitchen, food bank, or another space in which you work as part of a time to achieve a larger, altruistic goal
Dragon boat racing or another sport that relies on team effort instead of individual effort
I hope that you found something in this post that you’ll implement today and begin feeling the positive effects of. You’re worth a social media experience that amplifies your energy and brings light to the things that matter to you.
Have you found a life-improving way to use social media that I haven’t mentioned? What was it?