JAKARTA - In the current era of the onslaught of social media, not a few people choose to spend their time. Tracing family and friends' social media posts to catch up. Photos such as engagement rings, baby bumps, and holidays flood the feed that can trigger "Fear Of Missing Out". This phenomenon then makes you re-evaluate the life you are living. And if you feel that you are not as lucky as people's uploads, gradually depression begins to undermine.
In an infographic about "How to Prevent Social Media Depression" written by Nicola Brown, according to Livestrong, Wednesday, August 2 explains. The more time you spend chasing online lag, the more you feel you are missing.
In addition, unconsciously you start comparing yourself to those people. This makes you feel more depressed than making comparisons in the real world. However, the photos and status seen from friends are just footage of their lives. People are actually reluctant to upload sadness and difficulties on their social media.
Not only using social media to establish friendship, most people also make it a news search platform. A study conducted in 2015 found that portraits and creepy stories about war and conflicts uploaded on social media could cause a person to develop symptoms ofâsuhu.
This shows that the heavy use of social media can manipulate the brain and make a person more vulnerable to low self-control, low self-esteem, overeating, and preventing thinking for oneself.
So, how to avoid the negative impact of social media?
Brown suggests recording time spent on social media every day for a week and trying to limit it.
"If you spend two hours every day socializing the media, try to reduce it by half."
The reason is, social media users tend to search further on one thing that is seen and this can take up to hours. If bored, instead of stopping, users instead choose to recharge the social media page which never ends.
Use the usage restriction feature or mute notifications from the app to prevent disturbances or floods of information.
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The idea of changing using social media is useful for preventing comparing yourself with others and avoiding feelings of envy. If you limit social media and choose to establish relationships with friends directly, this will add to your relationship with others in real life and improve your welfare. If this is the case, you will think twice about using social media because face-to-face meetings are much more enjoyable than on social media.
It's easy to get all the information from the social media homepage. However, the more information you can cause it's difficult to choose which credible ones don't. You tend to be easily captivated to do further exploration without thinking whether or not the news is genuine.
Instead, Brown recommends users to open a newspaper website or watch news on TV. You can even choose to buy printed copies from your favorite print media to keep up with the latest events.
Remember, people who often use social media have a 2.7 times greater chance of experiencing depression than users who rarely see social media.
Depression is the main cause of mental health problems and it affects about 6.7 percent of the population aged 18 years and over in certain years. Monitoring the use of social media can help maintain good mental health.
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