Instagram gives me anxiety: 5 tips to manage discomfort

If social networks are the stage where we exhibit our personal world, Instagram is, surely, the greatest representative of this trend.

Many people use the platform to expose their lives to others, or to discover the new tourist destination or success that an influencer has had. The problem is that all this can lead to discomfort, especially if it is something that we would like to have and that, unfortunately, we do not have.

This makes many people come to mind the phrase: "Instagram gives me anxiety". How is it possible that a mobile application affects us so much? Let's see it below and what we can do about it.

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Instagram gives me anxiety: what to do?

Social networks are part of our life, both personal and work. Since they became popular in the first decade of the 21st century, especially with the appearance of large Like YouTube and Facebook, there have been many new web pages that have tried to emulate the formula. These social networks invaded even more the lives of their users when they made the leap to smart phones

. The one that has turned out to be the most invasive personally, also affecting the mental health of its users has undoubtedly been Instagram.

Appeared in 2010, acquired by Facebook in 2012 and expanding rapidly since then year, Instagram has become the stage in which all kinds of scenes are represented vain. Every day, its nearly 800 million users, mostly teenagers and adults in their 20s and 30s, post about of 80 million photos, with an average interaction of 3.5 billion "likes" and 40 billion "to share".

The "Insta", as we call it users, has become the network in which young people receive all kinds of content that can affect your body image, self-esteem and, in some cases, general mental health. Wanting to emulate the lifestyle of the "influencers" makes us feel a healthy envy at all, which does not allow us to know how to value what we already have, feeling great anxiety as a result.

To top, Instagram algorithm doesn't help. This artificial intelligence is designed so that images and “stories” that have to do with our tastes and previous searches appear to us. For example, if you search for videos of dogs, you will get photos and videos of puppies, special accounts dedicated to dogs, and similar content.

The problem is that most of us look for things related to image and travel, or in general aspects that are related to some desire that we would like to fulfill in the future. In addition, and even accidentally, the simple fact of gossiping the image of a famous shirtless, while traveling in Hawaii and putting under the The typical comment of "here, suffering", makes us get hundreds of images of other celebrities in two tourist destinations with phrases of the like. So it is normal for Instagram to give us anxiety, because in certain cases it encourages us to feel bad about our lives.

Impact of the app on mental health

To know the impact of social networks on mental health, especially in the appearance of anxiety disorders and depression, the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and the Young Health Movement (YHM) studied a group of 1,500 British users aged between 14 and 24 years. According to the research, the most damaging network for mental health was Instagram, and it was mainly associated with anxiety, lack of sleep and depression.

Young people themselves recognized that Instagram, where they were exposed to all kinds of idealized photographs, had a very negative effect on their body image. In addition, it was common for a phenomenon known as FoMO: the Fear of Missing Out or Fear of Missing Something. They were afraid that when they uninstalled it or stopped seeing the "stories", they would miss something and that this would isolate them a bit from the peer group.

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How to deal with this anxiety?

Social networks have helped us to communicate, but also, as we were already commenting, to have negative feelings, especially when they are misused.

Anxiety is a psychological state that in some cases becomes pathological, a symptom of an already formed or developing disorder. People who present it can do it for different reasons, in which genetics and environment are mixed. It may be that you have a very dysfunctional relationship with your family, you may have experienced a traumatic experience or other types of stressful events.

These situations, although they can be overcome with the proper psychological help, are something that is part of the the patient's life, and cannot erase the traumatic event from her memory or disengage completely from her family. Instead, the "Insta" is something that we can take away from our life, since most of us can get rid of this application without our life going to waste. Here are some tips on how to handle anxiety caused by Instagram.

1. Control the time

We may spend hours glued to the application. This may seem surprising, but if we go to the menu and see where it says "Your activity" we can see the number of minutes we have dedicated to it each day during the last week, and the average in total.

Instagram has enabled an option to avoid overdoing the application, being able to ask for a "pop-up" to appear when we spend the time we want to dedicate to it. It should be said that it does not prevent us from using the application, but it does help us to take into account when we are passing.

2. The Insta in his time

A good option to not be glued to Instagram all the time and take time away from us, while generating us more discomfort seeing all kinds of influencers being "super happy" is having a specific time to watch the app.

The Insta in his time. We can set an hour in the afternoon, after doing homework or work, to dedicate some time to the application. After the hour, Instagram closes.

3. Distinguish between the real and virtual world

What appears on social media is not reality. The reality is in the street, not in the direct ones, the "stories" and the photos with Instagram filters.

The perfect life that famous and not so famous say they have through the networks does not exist. Okay, the trip to Hawaii makes us envious, but did you have such a good time on that trip? Were you happy all the time?

People are roller coasters of emotions, and "influencers" are also people. They may have fulfilled some of their dreams, but they are still deadly and her Instagram life is like makeup: she covers what's behind.

4. Identify the problem

Everyone makes a different use of social networks, and not all people who suffer from guilt anxiety of Instagram have to have a serious problem, although it is advisable to stop using it for a weather.

If you are one of those who feel the need to look at the application almost every half hour, while you are studying or working, it is interrupting your obligations.

Also, if when you wake up the first thing you do when you get up is to pick up your mobile and gossip each and every one of the “stories”, while you should be preparing for the day, you're doing the same thing smokers do when they wake up: being a slave to an addiction.

The "likes", the visualizations and being aware of what the "crush" or the ex has posted are factors that can be interpreted as gauges of our popularity and happiness, but they are nothing more than symptoms that we have a problem and we should consider looking for help.

5. Uninstall it

Finally, and perhaps the most obvious of the tips, is to uninstall the application. It is not an easy task, since the FoMO is something that makes it very difficult for us to make this decision.

But, and in relation to the previous advice, if we have a serious problem, if our self-esteem, our body image and our mental health are being harmed because of the "Insta", it is best to close the account. Let's not let an application destroy our lives.

Bibliographic references:

• YHMM & RSPH (2017). #StatusOfMind: Social media and young people's mental health and wellbeing. UK. Royal Society of Public Health.