How to 'Marie Kondo' Your Social Media to Support Emotional Health

For years, we’ve been hearing that social media can be detrimental to emotional health and exacerbate symptoms of depression and anxiety, not to mention lower self-esteem. (Frost & Rickwood, 2017).

Because of this, I resisted hosting support communities on social media platforms at first. I didn’t want people going to them to get support if it actually harmed their mental health.

That’s exactly opposite of my mission and values in the work I do.

Because my work offers evidence-based resources and strategies, I immerse myself in scientific literature, discovering new ways to help people work toward overcoming burnout.

That’s how I came across information that changed the way I view support communities on social media platforms.

As it turns out, when we go on social media platforms to engage in a support community, instead of just scrolling, it can actually help boost our mental health (Gilmour et al., 2019).

The thing is, “Just go to support communities and don’t scroll,” isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Since it’s unlikely most of us will abandon social scrolling altogether, what’s the solution? What can be done to decrease the harmful impacts of social media on mental health and wellness?

Be Mindful of How Content Impacts You Emotionally

Start with being mindful about what you’re reading, staying attuned with thoughts and emotions that come up while spending time on social media. If it takes you down a harmful or undesirable path of thoughts, take note of that.

Tune in also to how you’re feeling — emotionally and physically. Does what you’re reading make you feel sad? Angry? Fearful? Or do you feel sensations in your body that are unpleasant (like tightness in the chest, or heat traveling down limbs)?

If so, it might be time to do a little reflection. The following questions can be helpful with deciding how to proceed…

• Is this person or account one that regularly causes me to think undesirable thoughts?
• Does this person or account regularly cause me to feel unpleasant emotions or sensations I’d rather not feel while scrolling social media?
• Would unfollowing them reduce my unpleasant emotions and sensations?

If the answer to those questions is yes, you may want to consider unfollowing. But if you feel they still add value to your life, you can continue to follow, just be mindful of any patterns related to their content.

Be Mindful of How Content Helps or Harms

Next, be mindful of what content is helpful. There are a lot of entertaining and helpful accounts on social media. You probably have a few you follow because they resonate with you or make you feel seen, which can foster experiences of safety and hope.

Keep in mind, though, just because it resonates doesn’t mean it’s helpful for your overall mental health or personal goals.?

In this case, ask yourself:

Does this content…

• Make me feel better or worse?
• Support my goals or make me feel hopeless about reaching them?

For example, let’s say you’re leaning into burnout recovery because you are struggling, but want to stay in your current profession. Following someone who is celebratory about leaving their profession is probably not going to benefit you emotionally or align with your goals.

Instead, try finding accounts of those trying new burnout strategies because they want to stay in their profession. Their content might be a better fit.

Choose When To Engage With Certain Types of Content

And finally, think about how you choose to consume potentially upsetting information. Often we follow advocacy or new organizations because we want to stay informed. But if those accounts have us ruminating on harmful events around the world and that is impacting our ability to function, we need to consider how to engage with that content in a different way.

While you don’t need to isolate yourself from everything that upsets you, you can decide the best way to receive this kind of information.

One option is to unfollow certain accounts so their posts don’t regularly show up in your feed. Go to their pages on your own terms, when you have the mental and emotional bandwidth to have the thoughts and emotions the information may bring.

Marie Kondo Your Feed

A few years back, I watched Tidying Up with Marie Kondo on Netflix. The gist of her method is simplifying and organizing belongings by asking, “Does this item bring me joy?”

If the answer is no, you thank the item, then get rid of it.?

I think we can take that tip and Marie Kondo our social media. We can curate joyful spaces for our everyday scrolling, and choose to purposefully go to accounts that may bring up difficult emotions on our own terms. Let the algorithm work for you instead of allowing the algorithm to control when you view content that contains difficult topics.

Have you or do you plan to “Marie Kondo” your social media? Come back and tell me how it went and how it made you feel. I can’t wait to hear all about it!