For the past 10 days, I’ve been going to bed with my phone battery being on about 50%. Usually when I go to bed, my phone is as dead as I am. Sometimes, I would even have to charge it during the day because of how much time I would spend on social media during the day.
The past few days triggered some defense mechanism in my head where I unconsciously got off social media and kept myself away from anything that could harm my mental health that was heavily hit after my family contracted Covid. It’s like this defense mechanism in my head said “She is not strong enough now to do the best for her, I am taking over. Let’s keep her away from anything that could harm her mind.”
And that really happened. I didn’t even realize that I didn’t open Tiktok or scrolled down Instagram for days. I would only come here on my blog and go to The Poetry Bar Instagram page to publish there. That was it. During the evening, I would only have a lamp on because I wanted it to be a bit darker in my apartment, I would light up a candle, spend an hour or two in the evening reading in bed, journaling and I finally started my book.
I would read the news only because there are restrictions being implemented so I want to be updated. There’s a lot of negativity right now in the media so I am avoiding that. This also made me realize that I have a very toxic social media feed, something about it makes me either angry or depressed so as soon as I get better, I am working on changing my social media feed, blocking what and who needs to be blocked and just cultivating a more positive online experience for myself. I don’t know why I never thought about this considering how much time I spend online.
Lately, when I would go online in my free time, I would go to Youtube and watch some of my favorite youtubers who have pretty positive, fun content such as Emma Chamberlain, Alex Meyers who makes animated reviews of tv shows and movies or Joshua Weissman who cooks. Life doesn’t seem so bad when you watch someone cook mouth-watering food. I’ve also watched some old and new episodes of John Oliver. I know that his show isn’t a cheerful show that talks about rainbows and butterflies but I like his show and some of his episodes are hilarious even when discussing some serious subjects.
This is the first time that I’ve realized the impact my social media diet has on me, my health and my mind. I create content online myself, I have a blog and a Youtube channel and an IG profile – I am out there online and I love doing this but I have to rebrand my own social media feed and also think about the type of content I put out and how it affects people who interact with it. Why has it taken me so long to realize this?!
I am going to spend my evening as I’ve been spending it for the longest time – reading and drinking tea. Hope you are all having a good week!
Love,
Luna
