The world of hunting & fishing social media content creators, youtube creators, and influencers has been growing immensely, but so has the link to social media fuelling feelings of FOMO, anxiety, depression, and isolation.
Many of us have felt the pressure of wanting or needing more likes, more followers, and that burning desire to "become someone." Social media is the outlet to show mostly only our bright moments, the ones that we think will make people look up to us, and want to be like us, or at the very least hit the follow button.
While social media has its positives such as new found friends, rekindling old friendships, and gaining community. It also has its downfalls such as keyboard warriors, bullying, friendship drama, jealousy, addiction, anxiety, and even depression.
Just like practicing your shot or cast to get better, you can practice small mental health tasks to help yourself stay positive and guard your happiness when it comes to social media. Below are five tips on how to protect your mental health as on outdoors person on social media, and ways to put the tips into practice!
Do Not Compare Yourself
Remember social media is mostly a highlight reel. One simple photo or video shot can be the 3 seconds of happiness someone displayed while they are in the midst of total turmoil and refuse to talk about it. So while you are seeing and comparing yourself to someone else's "amazing life", remember most have little monsters just the same as you that they are hiding.
Everyone is also on a different stepping stone in their journey. Someone who has more followers may have been "at the game" much longer than you, or someone who has less followers may have been grinding for a long time without purpose and is working hard to find their niche and people now.
Just try to remember everyone is in a different place, and it is not helpful to your mental health to compare yourself to others.
Something you can do for yourself is to ask yourself why you feel the need to compare yourself to another person. You may be able to turn this around and use it as a way to set goals for yourself, or something else to work towards. Seeing someone being successful can be a great source of motivation for you, rather than a point of jealousy.
If we let the comparisons get too far we start to see a negative cycle like the one McLean Hospital wrote about. McLean Hospital wrote "To boost self-esteem and feel a sense of belonging in their social circles, people post content with the hope of receiving positive feedback. Couple that content with the structure of potential future reward, and you get a recipe for constantly checking platforms." Essentially sing social media gives our brain a reward of a Dopamine hit much the same as your favourite food, sex, or happy social interactions. So when we couple that Dopamine release with constant likes, comments, notifications, etc. we are creating a recipe for social media addiction. An addiction that is fuelled by a need to be better than the next person, to be constantly growing, and to gain more recognition and fame.
What You Can Do: Get clear on why you are using social media and what you hope to accomplish, stick to that, your "Why". When you have a twinge of jealousy, a negative feeling about yourself, or feel yourself comparing after looking at someones posts, remember social medial is a highlight reel NOT a bloopers reel, people only post their best. If you continue to have this feeling around certain people's posts, prune your friends list.
Set Boundaries For Yourself
Scheduling your time between social media are very difficult, and unfortunately we are in an era of immediate gratification where we can just grab our cellphones and find what we want.
A study completed in Canada in April 2019 found that 13% of respondents spend over 10 hours weekly on social media alone, and approximately 1 hour and 69 minutes on social media daily.
A small study completed by "We Are Social" and "Hootsuite" a social media scheduling platform found that nearly 60% of people in the world are spending 6 hours and 43 minutes on the internet in ONE day.
"A recent study, published in Computers in Human Behavior, compared state-by-state divorce rates to per-capita Facebook accounts. The study found a link between social media use and decreased marriage quality in every model analyzed. It also found that a 20% annual increase in Facebook enrollment was associated with a 2.18% to 4.32% increase in divorce rates. The study’s model from the individual survey results predicts that people that do not use social media are 11% happier in their marriages than people that regularly use social media."
"Another study indicates roughly one-quarter of partnered and married adults feel cell phone usage has become a distraction and source of tension in their relationship. About 8 percent admitted to arguing with their partner about how often they use such sites."
What this says is that it is important to create boundaries in your relationships surrounding social media usage.
Personally, I suggested to my spouse that our bed and bedroom were for us as a couple and that I would appreciate his attention when we are in that room. I noted my jealousy towards his cellphone and that it hurt my feelings that when we were so close it felt as though he was more interested in other things. He noted he understood my feelings and we would try to change both our social media usage in the bedroom. Honestly, it feels so much better to be able to lay next to a spouse and talk about the day or your feelings and not be jealous of a cell phone or mad that the room is lit up by a screen. I feel putting our phones down faster in the evening has really helped at least my mental state. Hopefully his as well.
What You Can Do: Be mindful of the time you are spending online, limit it, then intentionally set times to step away from social media and be present in your physical life. Use a bedtime app or the focus function to stop incoming notifications between certain hours.
Take Outdoor Breaks
An article written by Ontario Parks noted the following which was taken from a medical research document, "There is a strong connection between time spent in nature and reduced negative emotions. This includes symptoms of anxiety, depression, and psychosomatic illnesses like irritability, insomnia, tension headaches, and indigestion."
Work on increasing your time breathing fresh air without social media calling to you.
I'm not saying to leave the house for an hour walk without your cellphone, but rather do not answer social media messages, or notifications while on that walk. Take the time to walk or sit in the sun or in nature without the distractions and pull of social media. For some people this may be very hard to do as it seems more and more people are completely addicted to checking their socials. Start with just a few moments, and resist all temptation to look at notifications and messages.
What You Can Do: Take little detox breaks from the online world. Allow nature and the outdoors to five you some good vibes and vitamins! Use the "Focus" function on Apple cell phones to limit the notifications that come through for a period of time. Use the app Calm to chill out a bit while you are in nature or away from work.
Ask yourself why
Why does something trigger me? Asking this question helps you become much more self aware and protects your mental state. By asking why this triggers me you can work to get to the root of some difficulties. This basic question helps to enlighten a person further as long as they continue the work after the basic question.
Maybe you do not jive with a person or business and it's time to remove them from your following list. Maybe a certain subject upsets you and you can take this time to research and learn more to make more informed decisions. Maybe the triggering post or comment is something to have a discussion about with that person, or maybe this is a topic that you feel is off limits and you do not want to see more of. Personally, I have pruned many people and companies from my list in the last year as I just don't agree with them and educated conversations cannot happen. So away they go to help my mental state.
Ask yourself, why am I on social media right now? Are you hiding from stress or life difficulties? Are you truly searching for an answer to a question? Are you wasting time or bored? Or are you starting your day looking for good news?
If you answered yes to some the upper questions it might be time to think about how to use social media more intentionally. There are definitely many pros to using social media however, there seem to be a few more drowning negatives in these times.
What You Can Do: Be clear about your intention and purpose for logging into social media apps and stick to that intention. Pay attention to what you are doing on your devices and how you feel. Think is this what I want my life to be like? do I want to continually be drowning my irritations or boredom in social media? Or do I want to curb my use and find a more positive purpose for my "extra time?" Focus your spare time on being positive and productive, that may mean finding a better way to spend that time rather than with a device in hand.
Be intentional about what you are posting
We talked about pruning your friends list to keep your feed positive, likewise, think about what you’re sending out to the world. Before you hit send on a post, consider whether it’s spreading positivity. You can help make your feed an encouraging place to be by avoiding posting things that attract trolls or online arguments, and fostering a community of support and positivity among your friends or followers – at least on your page.
What You Can Do: Be very intentional about what you are posting. Are you posting the kinds of things that make you anxious or irritated about social media? Or are you posting positivity and with transparency?
Social media can be an awesome tool that helps bring people together as well as get your life and your message out to the masses. On the flip side it can be a source of stress, fuel feelings of anxiety and depression, and create feelings of inadequacy in many users.
Check in with yourself often and see how you are feeling about your social media usage or how social media is making you feel. By checkin in with yourself honestly, you can start to nip some potential dangers in the butt.
Using the tips and actions in this article as well as other sources and professionals can help you steer clear of mental health issues related to social media and the outdoors space.
Online and Mobile Therapy:
BetterHelp Talkspace
If you feel like you are in too deep and need help here are some links:
Canadian Suicide Prevention Line 1-833-456-4566
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-8255
Kids Help Phone Line Canada 1-800-668-6868
United States Addiction Centre 1-844-990-4434
Some spaces I took information from:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/284331/canada-share-online-time-per-content-type/
https://the-message.ca/2020/01/31/canadians-are-spending-nearly-six-hours-online-every-day-65-worry-about-privacy-report/
https://www.mckinleyirvin.com/resources/digital-divorce-a-guide-for-social-media-digital/how-social-media-affects-marriage/#:~:text=Excessive%20time%20spent%20on%20social,to%20negatively%20impact%20romantic%20relationships.&text=The%20study's%20model%20from%20the,that%20regularly%20use%20social%20media.
https://bdtechtalks.com/2019/10/25/social-media-impact-marriage-us/
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-13-407