If getting energy from being around people is how a person determines they are an extravert, I am one.
I love doing things with people and usually come away feeling energized just because I was with other human beings. My wife, not as much.
I didn’t know this about myself until after getting married. I would look at the week’s schedule and see we have an evening dedicated for just the two of us and think we had a well-balanced week ahead. My wife would look at the same schedule and think, “We only have one evening dedicated for just us!?!”
You know something we’ve lost with social media? We’ve lost evenings dedicated to just us.
We’ve lost the day or two here and there where we didn’t hang out with friends, that weekend we didn’t do anything special other than stay at home.
And I’m not just talking about me and my wife. I’m talking about every one of us who chose to make social media part of our life.
Through social media, we are with people 24/7. We are plugged into conversations on the go and facing little comparisons with other people in our mind every hour of the day. It’s no wonder we are seeing higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide than ever before. And while there are no doubt many dynamics playing into this phenomena, one of them likely has to do with the fact that not even extraverts are designed to need people this much.
Yes, extraverts need people, and COVID-19 has not been kind to us. But we don’t need people twenty-four hours of the day. We don’t need people every day of the week.
About a year ago, I began struggling to sleep at night because of anxiety I felt in my chest.
At first, I thought it had to do with homework that was due or financial instability I was concerned about. But as finances stabilized and the semester ended, I still felt intense anxiety inside of me.
That’s when it dawned on me that it might have to do with how many Facebook conversations I am involved with throughout the day. And if I participated in any of them within the last hour before going to bed, I often felt the anxiety even worse.
Sometimes these conversations were more like debates, but not always. I began noticing that simply having so much social interaction caused a heightened level of anxiety. Think about it, even in a casual conversation, if you ask a question and the other person doesn’t get back with you right away, you’re left hanging. You feel slightly anxious as you wait for the response. This happens every time we engage in a comment thread on Facebook and people don’t respond immediately. Part of why we may not realize how these mini conversations affect us is that the anxiety level of this kind of interaction is so low it typically goes completely unnoticed.
But with social media, we likely don’t have just one or two conversations stringing on throughout the day. If we take one scroll down our Facebook feed that spans three folds, we’ve likely engaged our minds in nine different conversations as we have seen nine different posts.
I’m not emotionally healthy enough to process nine different perspectives on politics, questions of faith, or other current events…three or four times a day. And quite frankly, I don’t think any of us are.
We are not designed to be around people this much.
We are not designed to have running conversations nearly every waking hour.
And if you, like me, happen to be facing anxiety that troubles your sleep, your body is trying to tell you that something needs to change.
About eight months ago I quit engaging in conversations on social media. At first, I did it primarily because I had so many other responsibilities and areas of mental focus to put my mind, I couldn’t spend it on social media conversations that likely wouldn’t prove very profitable. But then I noticed simply not engaging lowered my anxiety level.
Soon after my decision to not engage conversations, I started only going on social media one specified time a day and I felt even better.
I’ve gotten to the point where even if I do decide to engage in a conversation or two here and there, I have a healthier rhythm of finding time where it’s “just us,” or “just me.” Not only is my anxiety down and I am sleeping better, but I can’t help but think that my actual engagement with others is healthier as well. I feel more patient and gentler. My mind is more at ease. I hope it’s felt by those I interact with, as well.
If you have a social media account, chances are you spend way too much time on it—even if you’re an extravert.
You may have discovered for yourself in the last year that social media is not always helpful to mental health. In fact, it too often is outright harmful.
Let me suggest three practical ways you can integrate rhythms into your social media use that reflect face-to-face relational norms:
1. Have specific times of the day you check social media.
I usually do it at the end of my workday. Occasionally, I’ll check things after supper as well. You don’t have to keep social media usage to just once or twice a day but set aside specific times for when you’re going to use it.
I limit my time to thirty minutes. Most times, I don’t even spend that much time on it. But the limit keeps me guided in how I use the time and helps me avoid the scrolling-in-a-vacuum habit that can develop if I’m not careful.
2. Sign-out of your accounts when you’re not using them.
I was somewhat surprised by how simply signing out of my accounts at the end of my thirty minutes kept me from habitually checking social media while on the toilet or standing in a check-out line. I was shocked, however, by how the simple act of signing out of my accounts when I wasn’t using them gave me an increased peace of mind.
After all, when you leave a friend’s house, you don’t let the door hang open. You close it. When you get home after work, you crawl out of your truck or car and shut the door. These function as mental switches that your brain is transitioning into a new area of focus. Signing out of a social media accounts can do the same. It can help us rest, having let the conversations go until we sign back in again the next day.
3. Become comfortable with boredom.
If you are like me, there is very little on social media that actually interests you. We tend to be drawn into social media when we are bored (i.e. sitting on the toilet, standing in a line, waiting in a waiting room, etc.). We bop on to see what other people are doing or saying unaware of how absorbing so many different posts engages our mind in various conversations. And if there is no closure to those conversations, our minds are left with open anxiety. Once we’re done using the restroom, when our name gets called, or we get to the front of the line, we quickly leave social media and get back to whatever we were doing. Only, now we have three to nine more things on our mind subtly using up energy.
If we want peace of mind, we have to create boundaries with our use of social media, and to create boundaries requires that we become okay with boredom again. After all, boredom can actually inspire creativity.
We all need people, and extraverts get a special sense of energy from being with others.
But none of us need other people as much as social media has led us to think. What we are actually looking for when we whittle away time on social media is meaningful relationships. In order to have the emotional health to develop meaningful relationships, each of us also needs space.
If you find it hard to create structure in your usage—if you aren’t wired to follow a rigid schedule yet social media is causing you anxiety—you might need to quit social media altogether. But for those of us who don’t mind boundaries, creating a few ground rules for our social media use can help us live healthier mental lives and ultimately engage others more meaningfully.
What are some boundaries you have put in place for your social media usage? Share in the comments below.
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