Is your social media use helping you share your creative work, build effective connections and find inspiration or is it keeping you stuck in The Comparison Trap?

Time scrolling through your feeds can be valuable if you are intentional about how you use social media. The problem comes when you check your account for a minute and disappear down an internet rabbit-hole for an hour. You look up from the screen and are struck with comparison paralysis.

First you feel an ennui and then your thoughts spiral into a series of realisations: I am not doing enough; I don’t have enough. I am not enough. This is followed by self-admonishment for such covetousness and vanity, time-wasting and shallow thinking. It seems like everyone has life sussed and you don’t.

Searching for the Good Light

The clue is in the verb “to seem”. We share images and status updates to fit the story we want to project about ourselves or our work. You take a selfie from your best angle and in flattering light. You photograph lunch because you want people to know you’re a fan of Rachel Ama’s vegan recipes. You elbow the junk on you coffee table out of shot so anyone viewing your Instagram or Facebook accounts will see only a posh candle, fresh roses and a highbrow book.

Impressions and experiments

You control your online image because you want to give the world a good impression and hide the real one with its imperfection and ready meals and messy living room. This isn’t much different from you shoving clutter into a drawer or scraping greasy hair into a ponytail when your neighbours show up unexpectedly. We project the home life we aspire to via our online personas.

Sometimes we experiment with new identities via our online selves. We can dip in and out of a stream of tweets about allotments or sign up for a hard rock fan forum. In our online skin, we can be whomever we want, and when we are no longer interested we simply unsubscribe, unfollow or stop engaging. We fade away without losing face in the way we might in the real world.

It is a human thing to show our best selves because we want others to think well of us, and when the truth isn’t as attractive as reality, we contrive things. If we are striving for the perception of perfection in our online presence, so are others. It is curious then, how we judge ourselves against such unfair benchmarks.

Blurred lines

More curious than comparing ourselves harshly, is how we open up to these opportunities in the one place where we can take refuge from the noise of the outside world: our homes. We invite in the pundits and bigots, the show-offs, the gossips, the judgemental types, the chatterboxes and doom-mongers, the bosses, the know-it-alls and the perfectionists. If any one of these individuals were seated at our kitchen table espousing unpalatable views or making us feel inadequate or bored, we’d ask them to leave. But they are not and so we welcome them over the threshold of our online home and seldom ask them to leave.

The line between work and play has become blurred thanks to mobile technology and the Internet, which allow us to be connected whenever we like, work from wherever we please, gain knowledge in a second and never be out of touch.

These advances were intended to enhance how we live and work; which they do in myriad ways. The problem comes when our behaviours around, and dependence on, our digital devices and accounts exacerbate our stress levels and negatively affect our wellbeing.

Let’s say we struggle to wind down after a long busy day and the frequent arrival of alerts and ringtone sounds, plus the sight of unanswered messages or unwritten articles, induces anxiety. Perhaps we crave connection or affection but prevent it by appearing to prioritize others or different sources of stimuli as we gaze at our smartphone in the company of an actual human being. We complete a life-admin task like online banking from bed at 10pm, and the temptation to click on something else is overwhelming. Soon it is 2am and we know more about a YouTuber’s antics in New York City than we needed.

Resisting temptation

Resisting the urge to check or click is a real challenge because, although teams of clever people create devices, software and platforms to help us, they also design these to entice us and keep us coming back. The pings and dings give us an endorphin hit each time they go off, and those messages telling us we have unread email make our hearts race in anticipation.

Over time, as we sign up to more social media platforms and download more apps, we can find ourselves feeling overwhelmed and/or unsatisfied. If you want to avoid feeling like this and break out of The Comparison Trap, try building good habits to help you take back control over your social media use.

Helpful Habits

1. Thoughtful curator

Can you set yourself a few criteria for the things you post, upload, tweet or comment about? Maybe consider how it inspires you or might shape the world you want to live in.

2. Perfect boredom

Between activities and events, what happens if you just pause and simple do nothing? If it’s unusual for you to do this, begin with moments of quiet stillness and try to increase the time as you continue with the habit.

3. Alerts and expectations

Switch off alerts on your phone so you can check at specific times, one feed at a time. Check your messages or comments at intervals and let people know what you’re doing, so they know when to expect a reply.

KEY TAKEAWAY

An online presence in our hyper-connected world is about being a conscious consumer and participant, not a passive by-stander. It means we understand whether a mooch on Pinterest makes us feel jealous or inspired, and that we have a choice to unfollow or hide a feed filled with opinions or facts that bring us down.

This is an adapted excerpt of my essay featured in Washing Up is Good for You, a Department Store for the Mind book published by Aster, an Octopus imprint.