Social media’s influence on your life

Welcome back to another episode of how to twenty-something, where today I wanted to talk to you guys about the role social media plays in your life

I think within the last year or so people have been slowly detaching themselves from social media, I know I personally deactivated my personal instagram account and only have a business one, I have had clients completely delete tiktok, it’s considered a green flag for someone to no longer have snapchat or to barely post on instagram, and I think this shift is great

We all grew up with social media starting in middle school if not before that and no one really knew about the potential downfalls it would have on our young minds, it’s addictive qualities, or the ability to make us low key fbi agents when trying find out information about someone

At first it was a way to stay in touch with people, a new way to share moments of your life with others around the world, or connect with people not in your immediate area and somewhere along the way it lost that effect and became more detrimental than beneficial

But you guys know me by now and I’m not going to sit here and shit on social media for the next however long, so let’s get into all of the positives social media brings, all of the negatives, how your relationship to it impacts your quality of life, and what you can begin doing to have a more balanced relationship with it moving forward

For starters, let’s break down the main different types of social media and their designed purposes

There’s networking ones like linkedIN

One’s for microblogging where you can’t write a lot in one post so it’s short form information like Twitter which is now called X.. which I think it’ll be referred to as twitter because what kind name is x, I digress

The ones that have become the most popular over the last ten years use photo, video, or other visual content to share information such as instagram, youtube, tiktok, and even pinterest

Discussion forums where you can ask and answer questions like on Reddit

I think Facebook encompasses all of the uses I just mentioned with long form and short form posts, groups where you can ask questions, pictures, videos, going live, and connecting with others and for me personally it was my first social media account

And then there are also less common ones for multiple different uses like collaborating, if your work uses teams or slack that is considered social media

There are messaging apps in general, social shopping platforms like etsy and poshmark, and social review sites: you’re probably familiar with yelp or rotten tomatoes

And these aren’t even all of the ones that exist out there, but as you can see social media is everywhere in some form, which is scary when you think about it

Like there is no privacy anymore, every time you create an account somewhere you are willingly giving out your information to the world

And they say what you post online will never ever ever go away

Social media used to be a way for you to connect with people you know and regularly share updates about your life with them by posting something online instead of picking up the phone and calling them or sharing in person

It was designed to enhance life, make it easier, reinforce already established relationships, and while yes it does still do that, it has also transformed the way people make money by being influencers, or how brands or artists can take off and become lucrative, or how to meet a stranger online.. It’s fascinating when you think about how humans and technology have advanced over the last 10-15 years and transformed the space of digital media

Some for the better and some for the worse

But let’s get into how social media influences your life starting with the negatives so we can end on a more positive note

I think the biggest, most common threat that social media poses on a young mind is distortion and comparison

What you see on the internet is a distorted reality of someone else’s life because they are only going to post and share about the pieces of them that they want you to see

Your brain registers that as the whole story when 99.9% of the time that is not the case

Or if your brain isn’t taking the picture you see as the full story it’ll naturally fill in the pieces to create a whole story

And most of the time that story that your brain has created is going to make you feel worse about yourself

The real reason as to why I deactivated my personal instagram account was because I would see people my own age or even in my city having fun with friends in large groups 

And because I didn’t have a large group of friends, I would feel really bad about myself, like something was wrong with me or no one liked me, no one remembered, and I was boring so that’s why i wasn’t getting the invite to join these groups of people

Whether I actually wanted to join in or not

For instance, on St. Patricks Day I remember seeing a group of girls that I was friendly with all hanging out together and doing a bar crawl and I didn’t receive an invite

I don’t even like bar crawls, yet here I was with fomo and with feeling left out because they all came together and my invitation got lost in the mail

Even though I ended up having a nice day with my best friend and we bounced around on our own accord and didn’t go to crowded bars or get super drunk, i couldn’t release the sadness I felt from being left out by the other girls

So I started with muting everyones stories that would provoke those feelings and then my therapist had me deactivate that account altogether

Fast forward to today, a few months later, I still don’t have a large friend group, but because i’m not constantly seeing it online anymore, I am able to shift my relationship to thinking I need one to be normal

I realized I actually enjoy small groups, if not 1:1 moments, because of the quality of the conversation that occurs

But social media distorted my view and my own likes because of the information I was constantly and accidentally feeding my brain

And I want you to think of social media as information… not necessarily right information, but information nonetheless

What you see is what you think so another example would be if your feed is flooded with couples all getting engaged or married or living their happy lives and you’re at home spending another night all alone with no one even on your roster, you’re going to naturally think something is wrong with you

That no one else is single, no one else feels alone, and everyone in the whole world is happily in love

When in reality, that is not true

And you can replace relationships with career advancements, trips, buying a house, bodies and so on and so forth

We all have a tendency to compare ourselves to someone else in an area of our life that we don’t feel very secure in and that comparison only makes you feel worse about yourself

What you’re seeing online is creating this distorted image of what everyone else is doing and therefore, what you’re lacking or failing in

These unrealistic comparisons lower your self esteem and self confidence and make you feel even more isolated, because being in your twenties is already a lonely enough journey and you’re only making it worse by feeding your brain images of other people’s lives.. Lives that you long for for yourself 

Or even a life that you don’t want for yourself but you figure if someone else your age is living this life then something might be wrong with you for not wanting the same or having the same thing

And you’re probably guilty of this type of flaunting too, whether you even realize it or not, where you’re only going to post something that paints you in a positive light, or similarly, increase the pressure on yourself to maintain a certain image online

I know I only post things where I have my shit together or I’ll post something that’s more quote unquote relatable AFTER I’ve overcome that challenge not while I’m still going through it

But it’s also my brand and reputation

I know I get afraid to admit to a downfall or a struggle I’m currently working through because why would someone want to hire a life coach whose life is falling apart in a certain area

When in reality, life is not always going to be this steady stream of happiness and shit is going to hit the fan and when it does I am allowed to have my own human experience around it and so are you

My own problems do not influence the way I show up and help my clients either

I know I have the tools and skills to help my clients with what they’re working through and it’s also why I have my own coach and therapist who are equipped to help me

I’ve said this on several episodes now but you need your support system, outside of your best friend, although that relationship is important too

Speaking of which, another downfall of social media is the decrease in face to face interactions which then leads to a decrease in social skills and a decrease in personal relationships

I think the pandemic really highlighted how important it is for us humans to have regular interactions with one another and not be cut off from society, and yet we still choose to sit and scroll than go out and experience life

I personally feel like my social life and social skills declined rapidly since 2020 and I was in my 20s and already adulting when the whole world shut down

Findings have come out with how damaging the face masks and social isolation was for kids and the elderly, but honestly I think it damaged all of our brains in some way

We’re not meant to be all alone, but social media invites you to stay home and connect with people online which is not the same, not even in the slightest

When you’re primarily connecting with others virtually, you are weakening your ability to establish healthy and personal relationships, your communication skills decline, and your ability to read other people’s facial expressions and body language weakens

Think of your social skills as a muscle, when you don’t use it, it weakens

Also, because you can’t read the tone of voice, the body language, or the facial expressions it is so easy for you to misinterpret what is being said or vice versa for someone else to misinterpret what you’re saying

Thereby creating unnecessary fractures in your relationships

Basically the more you connect online the more isolated and lonely you make yourself feel

There was a study done about how important human contact is for general mental health and it said receiving four hugs a day was enough of an antidote for depression, reduce your chances of getting sick, lower your blood pressure and stress levels, and release happy cuddle chemicals in your brain

So you need 4 hugs a day for survival, 8 hugs for maintenance, and 12 hugs for growth

I don’t know about you but I’m lucky to get just one hug a day.. Like a full frontal hug not one of those wimpy ass side hugs

I also know I’m not the only one who lacks hugs in a day because as a society we are touch deprived and social media only makes that lack of human contact so much worse

But it’s addicting and that’s another one of its pitfalls

Social media is a continuous stream of information and entertainment in the form of short term content and gratification and because of this our attention spans or ability to focus on one task at a time has drastically decreased

And not to mention our tolerance for delayed gratification is drastically reduced as now we want everything this instant

Tiktok is probably the most guilty of this because you can find entertainment across different topics in 60s or less and if a video is too long or slow you can speed it up or skip it all together or skip ahead to the point of the topic

The bite size content on repeat leads to a reduction in tolerance for longer, more in-depth content so now movies or reading become intolerable because of how slow it is

We’re also easily distracted with notifications or with quick little openings of the apps to check something and then close it out

Or letting the number of likes you receive determine your value as a person

Or reading into something if someone likes a story, reacts to it, or replies to it and it has now become a way for you to determine whether someone likes you or not

And I’ll tell you right now that I’ve muted most of my friends stories because they hang out with someone I don’t like and i’d rather not risk seeing it pop up on my feed so I take the out of sight out of mind approach

Overall, social media is extremely dangerous and detrimental to our success and well-being

And don’t even get me started on the cyberbullying that goes on online.. People are cruel and the disconnect of being able to hide behind a screen encourages people to speak their mind more freely

Which usually comes in the form of a hate comment or some celebrity or influencer getting canceled

I posted a tiktok last year and it was basically saying if you live in an apartment the interaction with your floor can be heard by your downstairs neighbor ten times louder

And immediately my comment section was filled with people attacking me saying they pay to live there and i should buy a house if i don’t want to live in an apartment and I’m like woah excuse me first of all i pay to live there too and am considerate to my downstairs neighbor and who can buy a house in today’s economy as a twenty-something who is self-employed and new to the entrepreneurship world

Anyways that’s not the point, the point I’m making is that since my comment section was not passing the vibe check at first, I actually found myself getting pretty upset and had to stop going on the app for a little and then stop reading the comments all together

And I see other people’s comments on other videos or stitches and it’s all bullying.. I say all the time “thank god I wasn’t in high school or college when tiktok came out because I don’t think I would have survived”

Fortunately for me there really wasn’t much cyberbullying when I was growing up we were old school and stuck with in person bullying

But like I said the most damaging thing social media does to the human is destroy our mental health

So if you suffer with any sort of mental health problems, which is majority of the population, then it is time to seriously reconsider the role social media plays in your life, your frequency in consuming it, and what you’re viewing when you do pop online

The last negative I want to touch on before I dive into all of the wonderful things social media provides for us is the widespread misinformation

I will say the conspiracy theories when something major happens is highly entertaining, but there are so many people who come online and spread false information

Especially especially especially fitness influencers

Those people share what worked for them and believe that everyone should do exactly what they did to get results and that is just not how it works

There is a girl who came across my feed who claims to be a weightloss coach and is promoting that she lost 12 pounds by dropping her calories down to 1500 and if you’ve been listening to all of the nutrition episodes then you should know by now to mark this lady as a red flag as you should not be dropping your calories to that low of an amount.. I don’t care who you are or how much weight you want to lose

That’s not sustainable or healthy and when done improperly as in for an extended time period will 100% guarantee ruin your metabolism

Resulting in you plateauing immediately and or gaining the weight plus more back

There is so much terrible information on social media and it’s on you to do your research and see what is misinformation or take everything you see on the internet with a grain of salt

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is

Those get rich quick schemes are under the same umbrella too

I know I just mentioned a ton of terrible qualities about social media, but I swear it does have it’s benefits as well and it might be contradicting to the negatives I just mentioned

For example, social media is good for promoting connectivity, not necessarily in the sense of quality time but with sharing snippets of your life with people you know and love

I post my albums on facebook for my grandma to scroll through, or my best friend lives out in california so what I post she can also see as we don’t see each other often

So it’s good for staying in touch with people or being nosey about people from high school

I just texted my friend kylie from high school about someone else posting about being pregnant and we both find it wild that people our own age are becoming parents when we still are trying to keep ourselves alive, let alone another human being

Social media is also good for spreading information and awareness like when the bridge in dc got hit by the cargo ship, we all new instantly

Or if something is going on in a different part of the world we will know about it

Or if someone god forbid got abducted we can all keep an eye for this child and come together as one

It helps the world feel not as a large because we know what’s going on in places where we don’t live the moment something happens, whether that something is good or bad

Social media can be educational, you can learn little hacks for cleaning or shopping, you can learn a new skill or recipes, get outfit inspiration, podcasts count as a form of social media and depending on the one you listen to it can be very educational

It is also useful for networking with people you typically wouldn’t meet

Like during the pandemic when I was going on month 5 of being unemployed I saw a notification on my LinkedIN that said some lady viewed my profile

So i clicked on who it was and turns out she was a senior designer at a firm that was 10 minutes from me, I messaged her and ask if they happened to be hiring and she responded with yes they are and to send my resume and portfolio over and one month later I was working there

You can also follow networking groups in your area and be up to date with what events they are doing for that month

And as an entrepreneur my instagram serves as a place for people to get to know me and the work I do a little better so they can either decide to work with me or refer someone to me who needs my help

Social media is also a way to develop community with following like minded individuals or joining a facebook group so you feel supported with what you’re going through or thinking about or interested in

I will say the most frustrating thing about humans is they join these groups with the intention to make friends or learn something and then don’t act on it at all

Like I posted about started my book club in a facebook group that only had women in their twenties who live in charlotte and I put everyone into a facebook messenger group

There’s about 40 people in this group and yet no one actually ends up showing up to the book club meeting

Instead they complain about not having friends or meeting people when the opportunity to have a good conversation with some pretty awesome ladies is right in front of them

So if you’re in a facebook group or you’re trying to build up your own community, go to the damn event and stop self sabotaging

Ask yourself, what’s the worst thing that could happen by showing up

Worst case is you never see those people again because they sucked, best case you make a new friend

Social media is good for creating an online community but it is far more important to get to the offline and in person part of the community

Especially if you live in a city because there are always in person events going on you just need to do your own research and actually commit to showing up

Anyways, another benefit of social media is the way it is a creativity outlet for a lot of people

It encourages self expression through pictures, videos, transitions, artwork, singing, writing, sharing a message that you’re passionate about, and your personality

I know I have to channel my creative brain when I’m writing an insta post or creating a podcast like this one, or writing to my email list

And lastly, social media has opened the door to different career opportunities

As I mentioned at the start of this episode we now have influencers, I personally have friends who are on the social media team for a bank they work at, singers who have gotten their big break by posting songs online, online businesses who have shops have been able to make a living by posting about their inventory, virtual assistants are needed to manage social media accounts for people who have an online business and no time to tend to that side of it

If you ask kids today what they want to be when they grow up some of them will say an influencer, it’s crazy how things have shifted and how prominent social media is in our lives

And if you don’t have social media or aren’t big on it then you are disconnected from the people around you

Which is not such a bad thing

I’m honestly a little envious of the people who just detach themselves from social media and never look back and the people who think of them still or remember to reach out to them are those who matter the most

Social media is part of my business, it’s a strategy for people to find me and get to know me so I will not be removing it

And I will be the first to admit that I’m addicted to it, but there are ways to minimize the negative effects social media has on your brain, life, and the decisions you make

Because you can make your social media anything you want it to be, it’s a way for you to be authentically yourself

You can download an app that restricts the amount of time you’re allowed on a particular app

Like i have an hour time limit for tiktok for every day, so I know that when that hour is up I have spent a total of 60 minutes on that app and there is probably something else I can do with my time

And for the record it’s not 60 minutes straight but spread out throughout the day

I don’t have a timer set for instagram or facebook because I’m not as addicted to those platforms

And on that note you can change your own algorithm to see the healthy side of things, follow the people you believe in, and unfollow the people you don’t care about, stay on the videos a little longer that mean more to you or that you want to see more of like dogs or healthy recipes

You can also completely delete your accounts or deactivate them and live your life beyond your screen

Basically, set boundaries for yourself around your social media usages

Turn off all notifications from your platforms so it doesn’t entice you to open your phone and go right to those apps

And refrain from checking your phone so constantly

Put your phone in another room when you go to bed so you’re not tempted to scroll when in bed 

I know I used to be guilty of constantly checking my phone right up until I fell asleep and then again the second I woke up and now I charge my phone in the kitchen so it’s completely out of my sight

Any social media notification can wait until the next day, it is not the end of the world if you don’t see something the second it comes through

In fact it is so much healthier for you to wait

Keep your phone across the room you’re in when with company or watching a movie so you can be present with one less distraction

And lastly, please know that the amount of likes you receive on any given post does not determine your self worth

I know when i was younger i would post on instagram and immediately turn my phone off for 30 minutes because if you didn’t have a higher like to minute ratio then no one cares about you or you’re not popular

Luckily I have grown beyond that point and post for value or information and could not care less about the amount of likes I receive

At the end of the day, social media is both good and bad for our society as a whole, but you do need to know where the bad parts surface in your life and draw clear boundaries for yourself accordingly

If you have a visceral reaction to a post or close the app and feel worse about yourself or notice your attention span is that of an ant, then you seriously need to reconsider social media’s influence on your life

I’m not here to tell you to delete your social media accounts but I am here to put the potential damages it has on your quality of life, and therefore, success and happiness, at the forefront of your mind

Basically, don’t be oblivious

And on that note, if something about this episode spoke to you or you know someone with a horrible social media addiction then please share this episode and tag me at coach.jessdiamond if you post it on instagram 

Otherwise this concludes another episode of how to twenty-something and I can’t wait to be in your headphones again next week with another brand new episode