Need More Confidence? Please Cut Down on Social Media.
As a young woman who recently started in the workforce, became a mother, and is always trying to build genuine relationships, I struggle with low self-esteem especially socially and professionally.
As a young woman who recently started in the workforce, became a mother, and is always trying to build genuine relationships, I struggle with low self-esteem especially socially and professionally.
I became a mother almost 2 years ago and vowed to work on my self-esteem so I can teach my daughter to be a confident and assertive woman.
When I was in college, I wanted to make women feel good about themselves. I dreamed of styling hair or doing make-up so I watched a lot of content online to learn, practice, and understand these artists’ day-to-day.
One day, I went down the rabbit hole of bad customer stories videos and that was enough to change my mind. Today, I am wondering whether I would have pursued it if I hadn’t spent nights and days feeding my brain with other people’s life stories, thinking mine would be the same.
Today I have a completely different career but I still want to help women feel good about themselves which is why I write. Is it because I never sought bad stories on being a writer on Medium or Substack?
My point is:
If you already struggle with low self-esteem, set up boundaries with social media.
I don’t think it’s realistic to completely cut it off but consuming content online should be monitored carefully.
I find that I get very anxious, confused, forgetful, and insomniac when I don’t set boundaries. So this is what I have experimented with for the past 2 years that works for me and keeps my self-esteem and confidence stable.
Schedule social media detox weeks on your calendar:
This is the very first step in my opinion.
I don’t do these anymore but I started with this rule because it gave me some time to think.
You’ll see later in this article that one of the most important rules is to be more intentional so this step is necessary so you can regroup with yourself and find out your intentions.
The reason why detox weeks are great is because you actually get to be bored.
God knows when was the last time you got bored and didn’t have your phone huh?
Boredom is good for us and creates some space to daydream, be creative, come up with new ideas, and innovate!
Some things I did during detox weeks were: reading, enjoying some tea in my backyard, baking, drawing, and redesigning my space.
Limiting the number of platforms.
I don’t know about you but I love so many platforms: Reddit, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X, Pinterest, YouTube, Medium, Substack, Facebook, etc.
Name it, I love it. I had all of them on my smartphone not so long ago.
You can imagine that it took me quite some time to go through my timelines and get all of the updates.
I had to cut them down by half and if I truly needed some platforms like Reddit, I’d use it on my laptop only.
It forces me to be more intentional. I only go on Reddit to post, for example.
Setting up a timer on each Apps.
If you have an iPhone, in the Screen Time settings you can set up App Limits. I am sure it’s possible on Android as well, since my husband has a Pixel and a more sophisticated set-up.
For example, I only allow myself to scroll through Instagram for 1 hour. I used to spend 3h+ per day on it: while commuting, at school, at work, while cooking, while putting the baby to sleep etc.
Scrolling with a purpose: business or seeking specific info or inspiration.
Being more intentional is probably one of the most important rules in my opinion.
You need self-control and purpose.
The fact that we live in a world with so much information is overwhelming. If you are anything like me, you probably struggle with analysis paralysis hence why I gave up on cosmetology.
In my opinion, the most powerful benefit of social media is access to knowledge and since I have been using it to learn and feed into my creativity I feel like I have an advantage over the person I used to be.
A perfect example would be if you have a bakery business, follow other bakers and get inspiration or seek out what people like the most online.
If you don’t have a business, another example could be, if you are a mother, follow other moms if you want to learn toddler recipes.
It is so important to be grounded, self-aware and know your boundaries when it comes to using social media.
If you have goals, yet struggle with low self-esteem, scrolling down on social media will cause your goals to remain dreams because you will be trapped into upward social comparisons, analysis paralysis and frankly just entertainment when you could have been using that time to build the foundation of your dream.
Our minds are so sneaking, if you happen to have a negative thought while scrolling, your mind will entertain it and will keep feeding that negative thought with what it wants to hear: “I am not good enough, I am afraid of people, I will never be as good as her, I will never excel at this, I am not as pretty as she is, etc.”
You need to have a purpose to remain grounded.
Social media is a powerful tool but it can become harmful if we don’t know how to use it to our advantage so try implementing the rules above and if they don’t help you boost self-esteem, I hope they can at least prevent you from tanking it.
If you got through the end of this article, I am deeply grateful to you.
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