Social Media

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    Study Shows That Limiting Your Life to Only “Positive” Friends May Be Hurting You

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    As it turns out, tuning out people who might need some compassion is simply an act of isolation, and isolation is almost never good for our own mental health. By cutting out the people who don’t always offer up those positive vibes, we wind up disconnected and lonely. Which, of course, we can’t share with the people left around us, because we are all living in the nothing negative bubble, so you are now living a very isolated life, which leads to much MORE anxiety, stress, and depression. 

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    Sharing – The impact of Facebook and Instagram on teens isn’t so clear

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    In the end, here’s the thing. You, and your kids, are not a study. You are all individuals, who may be negatively impacted by social media, or not. You may need to consider not using it, you may need to consider changing up who you’re following to get stuff that is good for your mental health into your feeds, or you may be perfectly fine using it the way you are. It might even be helping you and having a positive impact on your lives.

    Only you can truly judge that. If it’s harming you, I hope you’ll consider making changes. Follow the social media accounts for this blog if you want to start getting more information like this, or just stop using it altogether. If it’s helping you feel supported and less alone in the world, then enjoy that and I hope you’ll continue to share that within your social media circles.

    As I have said many times – do what works for you.

  • Sharing – 5 Tiktok Accounts For Your Mental Health

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    I joined TikTok with similar thoughts to what I do on other social platforms as well. But, it turns out creating video content is a little harder for me, so it hasn’t been as active as I’d like it to be. Maybe I just need to follow this advice, find helpful and insightful content and let myself be inspired by it?

    Check out the ones they suggest, and let us know if you have any favorite TikTok accounts related to mental health that you’d recommend?

  • Sharing – How Mental Health Advocacy Helps Me Bridge Gaps

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    How often do I see people talking about “wanting to be an advocate” and waiting for someone to invite them to be some sort of official spokesperson as if that is what makes one an advocate. It’s not. Advocates see holes and fill them. Sometimes that’s volunteering to work with kids, sometimes it’s telling your story, and sometimes it’s just seeing the people around you dealing with child abuse or mental health and letting them know they aren’t alone.

  • Sharing – Toxic Positivity: Harmful or Helpful

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    It’s the insistence that everyone around you also is positive all the time, demanding “Good Vibes Only” as the article points out, that worries me. Because people in real pain, social issues that cause real harm, etc. are not good vibes. When a team was winning gold medals, no one wanted to do more than focus on that success, and repeated stories of abuse went ignored. Is our constant need for positivity forcing us to ignore racism, homelessness, abuse, and many other social issues that we need to do more than give passing support to on social media?

    Maybe most importantly, are there people in our lives right now hurting, who desperately need our support, who we are ignoring because they bring us down?

  • Sharing – Create Support Network

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    These are all possible, they don’t require one person to fix things, which is where I suspect many of us get stuck. We want to support a loved one, or friend, who is struggling and in need of support, but that looks like a lot, probably more than we can handle. Frankly, it is more than you can handle, that’s why we all need the larger network. It only makes sense!