Get Offline! Be Kind To Yourself

What’s that? Get Offline? We all spend a lot of time on social media these days. Whether it be Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or anything else, it ends up using a lot of our free time.

Obviously, if you step away from social media, you will have more time to do other things. However, you probably haven’t stopped and thought about the actual, specific benefits to be gained by spending less time online. So, in this article, you will see the 4 benefits of reducing the time you spend on social media.

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Building A Support Network

Generally speaking, we need others around us for support, encouragement, challenge, stimulation, intimacy, and love. In fact, humans are so dependent on social relationships that our health depends on them. There is a lot of research that demonstrates that loneliness increases the risk of depression, suicide, substance abuse, cardiovascular disease, and altered brain function, and can even knock years off of your life.

When we have a strong social network, we can rely on it for emotional and physical support. Good friends will listen when you have a crisis, cheer you when you succeed, point out when you are being a jerk, and show up to move your couch or cook a meal when you are sick. If you are struggling to build self-acceptance, having friends who accept you as you are, and who you accept as they are, provides a useful template.

If you don’t currently have a strong social network, here’s how to build one:

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Shouting In The Wind

Sometimes when we share our thoughts on Social Media it can feel as if we aren’t reaching people. It can sometimes feel that unless you are one of those people who engages with the latest “righteous indignation” that seems to pervade sites such as Twitter you are talking to a very small audience or even to yourself.

One of my friends described it as “Shouting into the Wind” suggesting that like a leaf caught in a blowing gale your thoughts are simply tossed around. But don’t lose heart because at some point that leaf almost always comes to ground.

So it is with sharing thoughts, advice and encouragement on sites such as Twitter. There is always a chance that someone who really needs to hear what you have shared will chance upon it through a like, a retweet or a search.

He’s So Much Better Looking Than Me!

Social media allows us to connect to our friends, stay in touch with our families, make new connections based on shared interests, and… presents a never-ending stream of people who are better looking, prettier, fitter, more successful, on a beach, with six-pack abs and a cute new puppy.

It can be hard to nurture a healthy sense of self-acceptance in the face of all the aspirational images social media has to offer. At the same time, cultivating a sense of self-acceptance — accepting yourself just as you are, warts and all — offers a healthy way to deal with the pressures of social media. Self-acceptance helps to free you from worry about what others think and makes you more confident in living life on your own terms.

So, how do you maintain or develop self-acceptance amidst the noise of social media?

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