Facebook Anxiety

I have a nervous tick. I touch my nose when I’m anxious. I get lost in thought and then, suddenly, snap back to reality and I’m rubbing my nose. Like it was a genie. But the only wish I’m granted is more anxiety. It’s especially bad when I’m on my computer or my phone. Scrolling through Facebook. Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Feeling things, furiously moving down the newsfeed. 

Using Facebook you are bombarded with information, but it is not like browsing the front cover of a newspaper, or watching cable news. 

It is different on social media because it is so connected to your life. On Facebook, you are seeing information connected with people that you know. Each thing you see offers you the chance to interact.

A ten-minute session on your phone probably offers you one hundred updates from people you know.

John from college is posting about the Brexit, but he doesn’t know anything about economics, it’s annoying.

Allison is posting about the environment.

A high school friend is posting photo’s with all your other high school friends, they are having a get-together, for some reason you weren’t invited.

Then there is a cat video.

You’re scrolling rapidly through your news feed. Each photo, shared article, or status causing you to feel something. Some of it small, some of it large. 

Happy. 

Frustrated.

Amused. 

Confused. 

Afraid.

Disappointed.

Excited. 

Every single post makes you feel something. Your unconscious judgements fire away. Eventually you pull yourself away from it and your left feeling…..

Ugh.

Kind of stressed. Kind of anxious. Kind of angry.

You’ve just put yourself through the emotional equivalent of a hotdog eating contest. Now you have digestive problems. But, instead of organs that digest your food unconsciously, you need to process emotions with your mind. Emotions should trigger action. What happens when you can’t act though.

You’ve just been sitting at your desk. Your head hanging in a weird contorted posture. Reading short burst’s of the filtered versions of your friends lives in rapid fire sequences. You are collecting feelings, but it is happening so quickly that you are losing touch with the cause of the feelings. By the time you break away from your newsfeed you feel a bunch of stuff, about a bunch of stuff, but it is really hard to say what is connected to what.

When you have a tangle of emotion it feels confusing. Feeling confused about the way you feel actually makes you feel something different. It makes you feel stressed, anxious, maybe even angry.

This is the fate of the passive Facebook user.

Drawn in by the hopes of likes, messages, or other notifications you end up stuck browsing through a bunch of stuff that really doesn’t add value to your life. You end up collecting feelings that derail your productivity in real life.

You don’t have to be passive though. You have a choice about how you use Facebook. You can use it as a tool. By being an active user and posting about what is going on in your life. Letting people know what you are working on, sharing interesting ideas, or engaging in conversations.

Creating content to balance out all the information that you are consuming. Paying attention to the value of the tool, and not using it if it doesn’t make you feel good.