I’ve shared a bit about my mental health in a previous post in relation to the pandemic. Today I wanted to talk more about how my mental health affects my use of social media. The aspect of my mental health that social media most directly affects is my anxiety, though my ADHD can come into play as well.

While I don’t necessarily see any noticeable affects on my depression or OCD, I am sure that there are factors at play . When I have a depressive episode coming on, I tend to be drawn to posts or articles that support or continue the spiral. But that also applies to other areas of my life as well. I’m drawn to books or music that support or continue the spiral, even TV shows and movies, so I can’t blame social media for that, but it does allow for more exposure.

Again, I don’t really think social media affect my ADHD, but it is certainly evident in how I use social media sites. I will log in to look at one thing or check for a response to a post, and I will find myself 45 minutes later down some rabbit hole from following a tweet thread, researching some obscure bit of trivia that has no consequence on my life. This happens on Facebook as well, I’ll log in to wish someone happy birthday and find myself 2 hours later reading news articles and watching staged videos about cheaters getting caught in the act. This one I blame on OCD, because I can’t have the little notifications showing on my phone (also why I have notifications turned off in general). The only site I haven’t had this problem on is Instagram.

The aspect of my mental health that is most affected by social media is my anxiety, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Whenever something major happens, the “doom-scrolling” starts, and while my intent is to find out information, it usually ends up creating more anxiety. And even when it’s not something super major, but more in of a scandal in the book community or a disagreement, seeing some of the attacking posts presents its own layer of anxiety. But those are the big things, little things can create anxiety on social media as well.

For me, the most anxiety inducing experience is when I discover a favorite author has done something not so nice, or downright hateful. This is usually in the form of racist comments, or bullying reviewers, or they’ve done something illegal or immoral. While I don’t follow many authors on social media (for just this reason), I become very invested in those whose work has really touched me. And when these things are revealed through social media, I have to make decisions on how I am going to proceed. Do I get rid of all of their books? Keep reading them but not promote their work on my blog? Continue as normal for the time being? Keep what I own, but refuse to spend any further money on their franchise or promote their work? Because of my relationship to favorite books, these questions can cause me to spiral for a while. (And I have done each of these with different authors, depending on the severity of what they have done, but that’s a whole different post).

There have been a few times that my anxiety has gotten so bad that I’ve had to step away from social media for a bit, or at least rethink who I’m following and/or muting and blocking as needed. I try to maintain a balance between the desire to know what’s happening, and the desire to keep myself on an even keel. For the most part I do ok.

Do you find that social media affects your mental health? Any good tips for managing it?