mental health

Almost all of us use social media these days. According to studies, well over 90% of people in some age groups are regular social media users, be their platform of choice TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or others – or multiple different platforms, of course. 

With that use of social media can come plenty of pleasure, but also a lot of pressure. When we are constantly bombarded with perfectly posed pictures, with posts getting thousands of likes and shares, and generally with images or videos of people (ostensibly) living their best lives, we feel compelled to match them.

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What’s the best way to engage with social media? To try to post even more and better content? To check your various feeds even more often to make sure you never miss anything?

Actually, the best thing you can do for yourself social media wise has nothing to do with how you frame your pictures, how many Likes your post gets, or how many followers you accrue – the best thing you can do is simply to stop using any of it for an entire week.

How can we say that with such certainty? Because a recent study found an undeniable cause-and-effect relationship between take a week-long break from social media and a better sense of mental and emotional well-being.

Social media is addictive. That has been demonstrated time and time again in study after study, and if you’re honest and clear-eyed with yourself, you probably don’t even need a clinical and peer-reviewed study to tell you that – just imagine going without a scroll of Insta or a few Likes here and there on FB or some TikTok rabbit holes and chances are your pulse will quicken.

It’s no surprise why so many people are, at least to some degree, dependent on social media: it can be fun, it can be a distraction, it can be scintillating, it can be heartwarming. And what’s more, social media platforms are designed to be addictive; the algorithms choosing what content to serve you are designed to keep you hooked for as long as possible and keep you coming back as often as possible.

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If you’re spending a glut of time on social media – just like the platforms want you to – then chances are you are doing yourself a disservice, mental health-wise. Why? Because for many people, social media is more than just a time suck, it can literally damage your wellbeing.

An overuse of social media can cause depression and anxiety; that has been proven by rigorous scientific research and studies, and the effects are especially severe in younger social media users. And we’re not talking about just feeling a bit down for a bit of time, when we say depression, we mean the actual clinical term referring to a protracted state of low motivation, low energy, sadness, a lack of pleasure in life, and even thoughts of self-harm.

Anxiety, often paired with depression but distinct from it, refers to a state of worry and fear so elevated that it precludes many normal, meaningful engagements in life, preventing a person from doing things, going places, and seeing people that would otherwise bring them joy and satisfaction.

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In other words, depression and anxiety are real problems, and they can be caused or worsened by too much social media consumption.

Fortunately, a social media break of as little as one weeks’ time can reset the effects social media has on your well-being.

If you’re worried that quitting social media for a week will be hard for you, you’re probably right – it will be. At least on day one, and maybe days two and three, too. But by day seven, it’s almost certain you’ll be glad you took the time. So plan ahead how to make this break happen.

The first thing to do is prepare yourself mentally. Try to get your thinking into a place of gaining more time, more peace, and more focus in your day instead of losing your social media time. Then try to go for longer than usual without checking any social media even before you forgo it fully for the week. 

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And don’t forget to tell a select group of people about your plans. If you interact with anyone on a daily (or very regular) basis, let them know you’re intentionally going dark for a week; that way, they won’t worry about your sudden absence, and furthermore they won’t try to contact you about your social media silence, a contact that could well draw you back into the very orbits from which you’re trying to break away.

During your week away from all social media, make sure you’re not dwelling on its absence and waiting to get it back. You can do this by trying something comforting, like a favorite hobby or reading or exercise. Or you can try something new, also, to get your mind off the absence. Or get out there and have some actual social experiences with friends or family or even meeting new people. 

If you’re having struggles with the process, indulge in some self-care, be it in the form of meditation, a massage, a floating session, or just a quiet night relaxing at home. And don’t be too hard on yourself if this is a surprisingly hard process for you. Remember, you are effectively breaking a cycle of addiction, so it’s no shame in it being a challenge to take a week off from social media.

There are a lot of great things about social media. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram make it easier than ever to keep up with friends and family. Twitter lets you follow celebrities and politicians and authors and more with a sense of familiarity never before imagined. TikTok can introduce you to some hilarious content from some hilarious people. In short, your daily time on social media can be like a daily dose of happiness – and literally so, when social media engagement releases some dopamine into your brain.

You just have to make sure that when you do get back to social media use after your week off, you reengage with some new boundaries for yourself. Don’t start scrolling and tapping when you’re angry or said, as social media use an amplify these negative emotions. And don’t go on Instagram or TikTok or any of it when you have things that should take higher priority in your non-virtual life. 

Used like a spice, social media will enhance your happiness, bringing interesting people, places, and things right to your phone or computer screen; overused, and social media can sour your every day. And week. And month, and on it goes.

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If there’s one thing social media doesn’t have a lot of these days it’s authenticity. Even the accounts that promote keeping it real are usually peppered with filtered, carefully chosen and often sponsored posts. Our feeds used to be filled with friends. Now they’re crowded with influencers, celebrities and brands. 

Many people are over the idea of scrolling through other people’s most outstanding moments and just want to see something genuine. But can a social media app really be authentic? 

That’s what the app BeReal hopes to accomplish by providing a platform for users to show their true selves, not curated content. Here’s the lowdown on this app and why it might be a healthier alternative to Instagram. 

What is BeReal?

BeReal is a relatively new social media app that’s grounded in the idea of authenticity. It was founded in January 2020 by former GoPro employee Alexis Barreyat and now has around three million users. (Since April of this year, BeReal has been ranked in the top 10 of free iPhone social networking apps almost every day.) Its reviews are overwhelmingly positive so far.

The app is simple: Each day, users can take a photo that shows both their front-facing and back-facing cameras—like what a FaceTime screenshot looks like—which then gets posted to their feeds. There are no filters, no photo editing and no ads. The amount of retakes you can snap are also limited. 

The idea behind all of this? To create a social media experience that’s more authentic and less curated. 

How Does BeReal Work?

So, we know that you can use the app to post an unfiltered photo that shows your point of view from your front-facing and back-facing camera simultaneously. But there’s a little more to BeReal than that.

First, the app limits when you can post. Here’s how it works: Once a day, users receive a notification that they now have two minutes to take a picture and post it. The time of day is random. If you miss your two minute window, or opt to post later when you’re doing something more interesting, your friends will know that you didn’t snap your picture at the so-called “right time.” But, after all, the theme of the app is transparency and authenticity so disclosing this information is very on brand. 

If you don’t upload your photo, then you can’t see what your friends have taken and posted. This limits lurkers on the app—everyone has to participate to see the content, unlike apps like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. 

Is BeReal Better for You Than Instagram?

The big question of course is if BeReal is better for your psyche—and your soul—than the big social media platforms, particularly Instagram since that one has a similar format of posting images into a feed. Because of the constraints on how and when you can use the app, it does seem like BeReal could be a better option for people’s mental health. Here are some key reasons why:

It’s designed to be more authentic

The sentiment behind this app is to focus on realty, while Instagram is all about aspiration. BeReal isn’t a way to show others your highlight reel. It’s not presenting a curated selection of photos that only presents a slice of your real life. Instead, it encourages users to post about the mundane: You might see your friends sitting at their work desks, eating breakfast, lounging on the couch watching Netflix or waiting for a dentist appointment. 

On BeReal, there are likely to be fewer images of people partying on boats, enjoying a bespoke brunch or wandering idyllic, quaint towns in their best boho chic outfits since most people don’t spend the majority of their time doing these things. The format of the picture—having to see your face and what you’re taking a photo of—also adds to the realness. 

It doesn’t allow filters

BeReal’s authenticity mission extends to how you look in your photos, not just how and when you post photos.You may be unshowered, face free of makeup, hair messy or have food in your teeth. Plus, you can’t smooth out your wrinkles or blur your face to make yourself appear quote-unquote “better” looking. While Instagram gives users the option to pretty much recreate their entire face and environment (since you can edit your pictures within the app or by using other tools before uploading) BeReal doesn’t. 

It’s less pressure — and more fun

There’s no expectation for your photos (or your face) to look a certain way on BeReal. Everyone else is posting the actual reality of their lives—not just the highlights—so there’s little pressure to show off the best version of yourself or your environment. To try to would defeat the whole purpose of the app. This makes the app more fun since you actually get to see what your friends are up to each day without feeling jealous or less than if your life doesn’t seem to measure up to theirs. 

It limits mindless scrolling

Because BeReal limits when and how you can post, there is less content in your feed than on other social media apps. You can only see what your friends post (and only if you post a photo yourself) so there’s less of an opportunity to go down a rabbit hole of mindless scrolling on your phone. This prevents the app from being just another time suck and encourages you to get off your phone and live your life. 

It doesn’t have an advertising platform

As of now, BeReal doesn’t show ads, only your friends’ content. There are no sponsored posts or interstitials getting you to buy things or showcasing supposedly more ideal existences. (Remember when Instagram and Facebook were like this?) There’s no pressure to click and no annoying sales pitches. Just you and your friends and your daily lives. 

Only time will tell if BeReal will indeed be successful and overtake more traditional social media apps. But as younger generations get more vocal about wanting authentic social media experiences, this app (and others like it) will likely gain popularity. 

After all, most of us came to social media to connect with friends, not to be influenced or to be sold products and lifestyles. Many of us are tired of seeing curated feeds of filtered faces that don’t show true authenticity. A lot of people just want to keep it real these days—and expect others to do the same.

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Goal setting is a blessing and a curse for people with depression. One of the main symptoms of depression is low mood and motivation, making the attainment of goals seem difficult, or at times impossible. The more goals that go unachieved, the more a feeling of incapability or helplessness might sink in, reinforcing a depression cycle. Equally, the ability to achieve meaningful goals offers a sense of purpose that can cause the veil of depression to lift.

Part of the difficulty with this process is that the landscape of accomplishment is changed for someone who is experiencing depression. Collectively, we’re moving on from responses such as “just get over it,” to a more nuanced understanding. But the finer details of setting and achieving goals whilst in the midst of depression is still a work in progress.

In this article, I’ll share some tips and wisdom, from personal experience and fields of psychology, regarding the different goal-setting approaches required for depression. I’m a big believer that people can remain empowered and resourceful, even when their mental health is at a low. But that requires a few shifts in perspective, combined with a few bespoke tools.

Start From Ground Zero

One of my personal mottos is: “the only man I try to beat, is the man I was last week.” It serves many areas of life and self-improvement, including physical exercise, spiritual development, and goal setting. It keeps me focused on my journey, rather than comparing myself to others. But above all else, it scales up as I grow and evolve, supporting me in the midst of depression, and supporting me as I continue to achieve goals I never dreamed were possible all those years ago.

This motto points to what I call the ground zero approach. The ground zero approach is the very beginning of the goal-setting process. It begins with an honest assessment of your current circumstances, allowing you to develop goals that are achievable. There’s a balance of compassion with this process — push yourself too hard, and you might overextend. Don’t push yourself at all, and you might become trapped in a cycle of learned helplessness and low self-esteem.

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A huge part of accomplishing goals is setting the right goals, something often overlooked. When it comes to depression, there has to be even more care and consideration when setting goals. That includes the awareness that the standard context is often entangled with hustle culture, work-hard-play-hard mentality, or hyper-productivity. 

Many standardized goals that emerge in this field, from waking at 5 am to high levels of output or facing your fears, aren’t tailored for people who have depression. If you overlook your personal ground zero and use this as a template, you could end up choosing goals that are out of reach. The attempt to achieve those goals could cause more damage than good.

Adjusting the Context of Goal Setting

Finding the right context for your goals is an inward process. There’s a need to reject the standards of the wider culture and work on goals that stretch you, just enough, into a state of improvement or development. That improvement comes from ground zero, not an idea of where you’d like to start from. Many psychological models point to this. Even Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s model of flow shows how the flow state emerges when skill and challenge level is adequately balanced.

When it comes to depression specifically, psychologist Jonathan Rottenberg highlights a paradox of depression and goal setting in his book The Depths: The Evolutionary Origins of the Depression Epidemic. He writes that “depressed people don’t end up lying in bed because they are undercommitted to goals. They end up lying in bed because they are overcommitted to goals that are failing.”

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By external standards, the ground zero approach might not appear remarkable or groundbreaking. But is will be remarkable or groundbreaking when you take in full consideration of your ground zero. If you are struggling to get out of bed due to low mood, an unrealistic goal is to attempt to meditate for half an hour, journal, and write 1,000 words before the sun rises. Being committed to that vision neglects your ground zero, and makes you more likely to fail, or at least perceive yourself as failing.

Perfectionism and Progressive Overload

Building upon Rottenberg’s quote above, many people with depression demonstrate perfectionist tendencies. Perfectionism is also a big cause of procrastination. This isn’t surprising when you consider the nature of perfectionism. The authors of a 2018 study in Personality and Individual Differences note that: “the typical perfectionist is stuck in an endless loop of self-defeating and over-striving in which each new task is seen as an opportunity for failure, disappointment and harsh self-rebuke.” With depression, many normal goals are out of reach, and perfectionism can cause someone to strive to find the achievement of these goals easy when in reality, they aren’t.

This is challenging because this goes against the grain of societal expectations, and that’s the point — goal setting for depression has to respect the depression, without being a victim of it. That makes setting goals that incorporate ground zero a humbling process. It might mean having the goal to sleep in for only 30 minutes, not an hour, a few times per week.

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In weight training, there’s a technique known as progressive overload. Every time you train, attempt to lift a little more, progressively, whether that’s more weight, a few extra reps, or slightly better form. One more rep, or an extra kilo, is progress. When it comes to physical strength it’s tough to be dishonest — you can’t tell yourself you can bench 100kg if you struggle to lift 50kg. The same approach has to be taken to mental strength. Discover your current strength level, and aim for progress over time.

A Guide to Goal Setting for Depression

I’m a big believer that depression acts as a springboard to more fulfillment and greater well-being in the long run. Rottenberg agrees. His research has shown the need to reevaluate depression due to the number of people who thrive post-depression, which conflicts with the concept of depression being an incurable life sentence. One way depression can be a springboard is by learning a healthy, balanced approach to progress.

When you apply the progressive overload technique to life, you’ll find a sweet spot of pushing yourself, one that always keeps in mind where you’re at, whilst setting realistic but ambitious goals of where you’d like to be. With that in mind, below are practical steps to begin to incorporate goal setting for depression, to start at ground zero, without sacrificing ambition:

1. Accept your personal ground zero

It can be incredibly frustrating to feel restricted in comparison to others, especially if you’re ambitious. Feelings that surface around this are valid and have to be fully seen and understood. You might feel resentment or envy if you feel your mental health is holding you back. You might wish things were different. Give space for this, without falling into self-pity, or giving up completely.

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The process of acceptance can take time. It’s humbling because the ego will resist the nature of things. But acceptance means taking an honest assessment of where you’re at. How is depression affecting your life? Where are you wishing things to be different, or forcing yourself to reach standards that don’t incorporate depression? 

2. Cultivate self-compassion

Compassion is the desire to act to alleviate suffering. That makes it dynamic, as not all causes of suffering are the same, or require the same approach. Sometimes taking action alleviates suffering. Sometimes self-soothing or comfort alleviates suffering. Sometimes it’s a mixture of both. Either way, accepting your personal ground zero, and your needs at any given moment, involves self-compassion.

You might notice that you judge where you’re at as being weak. You might notice thoughts about never being good enough, or never being able to achieve big life goals when day-to-day activities are a struggle. In these situations, remind yourself that depression isn’t your fault, but it is your responsibility, and you can grow beyond its boundaries. Push yourself with consideration, not with resentment.

3. Work on self-validation

Recently I was talking to a friend who suffers from extreme anxiety. She was feeling upset that most people don’t see the amount of effort that goes into small accomplishments, such as going to the shops alone, meeting a friend for coffee, or walking through the center of town when it’s busy. It remains the case that people who haven’t experienced mental illness themselves might struggle to relate to accomplishments that others take for granted.

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That’s okay. Rather than looking for validation externally, learn to validate yourself from the inside, as you take into consideration what your personal ground zero was. If you manage to get up 30 minutes earlier after weeks or months of sleeping in, celebrate! This is the other side of the coin; if you’re able to honestly see where you’re at when you set goals, you’re able to earnestly celebrate when you achieve goals that are big wins from that starting point.

4. Become your own marker of success

I don’t believe in setting low standards or seeing depression as irrecoverable, or a life sentence. Part of the process of “beating the man (or woman) you were last week,” is accepting that your journey is your journey, and no one else’s. Only you can truly know where you’re starting from, what you’re up against, and what parts of yourself threaten to hold you back. Only you know the inner voice telling you what you can or can’t do, and on the flipside, only you know how great it feels when you prove that inner voice wrong.

Goal setting, like all forms of development, is deeply personal. Yes, these tips apply to depression, because of the need to find a healthier context. But they apply just as much to anyone on the path of self-development. Dream big, as big as you can, and never allow any restrictions to dilute those dreams. Balance those dreams with practicality, honesty, and the ability to grow from where you’re at.

Allow your goals to evolve as you do. Keep improving, be patient when progress stalls, and remember that one day the person you were trying to beat is so many weeks away, that they’re unrecognizable. That’s the biggest victory you can achieve. So keep fighting. Be honest about your ground zero. And remember even the tallest trees in the world were once seeds below the soil.

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