Is Social Media a Danger to Your Self Worth?

Did you see the Social Dilemma, the Netflix Documentary?
The documentary follows a young girl and a young man in order to show the harmful effects of social media on their individual psyches.
The young girl reads positive comments her classmates made about her on social media, and her self-worth is enhanced.
Immediately after, she reads negative comments about her physical appearance made by her schoolmates. Crushed, she bursts into tears.

Is it interesting that met with the two types of observations, the girl embraces the negativity and completely forgets the positive comments and how good they made her feel?

An expression states, “What have you done for me lately?” Do you think the girl would have been happy if she’d read the positive comments after the negative ones?

I don’t. I maintain she’d still be crushed by the negativity oblivious to the positivity that co-existed on the social media site.

Why are our egos so fragile? If the girl were a mature woman would she still have been crushed? I believe so.

Instagram has banned “likes” in many countries worldwide due to the fragility of our egos. Instagram users embrace the fact that their posts are devoid of likes or enough likes, so Instagram has reduced the importance of likes.
You will find more disadvantages of Instagram here: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-instagram/.

Facebook users, in an attempt to share their feelings in an online setting, become so volatile, they end up being banned from Facebook. Communication is now replaced by frustration. There is no way out of Facebook Jail; you have to wait until the “sentence” is over. You can find more information about Facebook Jail here: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/how-to-get-out-of-facebook-jail/

Would it be preferable to have no social media at all? I think not. You can find more information about the consequences of not having a social media presence here: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/no-social-media-presence/.

Instead, there are alternatives. Let’s go back to the girl in the documentary.
She was confronted with positivity and negativity and embraced the negativity.
What if the positivity was reinforced and reinforced again?

I maintain the devastating effects of the negativity would be diluted by the positivity being reinforced.

How do we help people on social media?

I understand it is not your responsibility to help people with wounded egos on social media.

However, there are billions of people on social media. If you are going to use social media anyway, why not follow these tips to ease the harm of the toxicity found on social media sites?

Tip 1: Let people know they matter.
What better place than on social media? Using social media is free and easy.
In fact, there are many free tools to send good vibes to your social media followers. Canva, PixTeller, Fotor, and PosterMy Wall are four of them. Here is a PosterMyWall tutorial: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/postermywall/.
You can find information about the You Matter Program here: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/you-matter/. You can find ways to send good vibes here: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/good-vibes-quotes/.

Tip 2: Make people smile.
Free meme-making tools are easy to use. Also, memes have the potential to go viral. Imagine making millions of people happy by posting one meme. Here you will find instructions and free tools to help you generate memes: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/best-i-can-do-meme/.

Tip 3: Tag people on social media.
If you feel your social media content will make someone feel special, tag them. Even if the content isn’t about them but is a topic you know they’d find interesting, tag them.
When I tag on Twitter, I post my content and add “features” and I add the tag. Also, I might post my tweet and add “FYI” if they are not featured but might be interested. They might be pleased you thought of them.
You will find instructions for tagging and more information about tagging here: https://www.mostlyblogging.com/tagging-on-social-media/.

Wrapping Up
This article reviewed a documentary that addressed the toxicity people encounter on social media sites. In addition, this post offered three tips for counteracting the negative effects of social media.

This article originally appeared on Medium.com at this URL: https://medium.com/technical-excellence/is-social-media-a-danger-to-your...