A few days ago, I had a mental breakdown after scrolling through social media for a bit longer than I should have allowed myself to. As I sat there looking through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, I was bombarding myself with content about all the hate in the world, all the people that disagreed with me, and all the things that I wish I had more power to change.
I broke down. I couldn't handle all of the negativity and lack of power to change any of it instantly. It was overwhelming, and I knew what was happening as soon as the emotions started to take over. I went upstairs, turned off my phone, and put on "New Girl" on Netflix just to distract my mind from all of the negativity.
For me, it was easy to recognize when I had over-exhausted my mental energy that night. But it's not always that easy for me, and it's certainly not always that easy for everyone else, either. That's why it's so important to be mindful of what we're viewing on social media and for how long, especially now.
If you're like me, you use those platforms frequently, and while they can be informative and eye-opening, they can also be really detrimental to our mental wellbeing if we don't use them cautiously.
It's important to use social media to speak out against injustices and educate ourselves about what's happening in the world right now, but we also need to be aware that a constant flood of negative content can hurt our mental health and make our desire for change irrelevant.
If we want to be advocates for change, we need to take active steps to ensure that we don't get discouraged, and that may mean taking breaks from social media every so often.
We need to be more mindful now than we have in the past. Social media has recently become a space to advocate for change, which is absolutely amazing, but it also means that it's a place where we are being shown a lot of negativity. We are not meant to overwhelm our minds with that kind of content all the time, so we need to be aware of how much we are allowing ourselves to digest in one sitting.
It's OK to step away and go for a walk, read a book, or take a shower just to reset your mind after being online. Seeing everything going on around the world can be overwhelming, and that's important to recognize.
It's necessary to prioritize your mental health when striving for advocacy, and taking a break every once in a while will give you the chance to recharge and make a change in the most effective and safe way possible.
