Hey y'all I'm back again with yet another post. This time I'm tackling a subject that is truly a huge apart of our culture... Social Media. Y'all I literally find myself thinking of what I'll post online before I've even attended an event sometimes, crazy I know. What I am learning though is that breaks from online social apps are actually good for your health, literally.

I have to admit even though I spend most of my time online for work I still found myself feeling overwhelmed and honestly depressed when logging on to social media. The crazy thing is that as drained as I felt logging on, I felt just as driven to remain active. I started to see ladies I admired online who had 'made it' coming forward admitting things like depression, and anxiety and it got me thinking if there is a link?

So I rolled on over to google and before I could finish typing, 'social media linked to depression popped up'. Here are some of the snippets from one of the MANY articles I found:

"The Instagram photo-sharing app...... is considered the social media platform most likely to cause young people to feel depressed, anxious and lonely, according to a U.K.-wide study by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) released Friday." - CNBC news

"It's interesting to see Instagram and Snapchat ranking as the worst for mental health and wellbeing - both platforms are very image-focused and it appears they may be driving feelings of inadequacy and anxiety in young people," said Shirley Cramer, chief executive of RSPH"- CNBC news

"Mental health experts are actually petitioning image based social media apps like Instagram to have warning prompts that pop up when using the app for a long amount of time, and disclaimers that indicate when a image has been altered." - CNBC news

It all made sense, I was super happy to find and answer to what I was feeling. That lead to another question, now that I was armed with this knowledge how would I apply it to my everyday life? The answer to that question is going to be different for each individual. In my case I have found a old school pen and pad planner to be super helpful. I write out my to-do's and actually pencil in social media time. I found I was too smart for many of the apps that help control screen time but simply setting my a timer on my phone before logging on makes me much more aware and keeps me from scrolling endlessly.

Ultimately it's about balance. Enjoy social media, but remember breaks have their place too.

Xoxo,

Mary

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