Dear Toni Tuesday……

Dear Toni,

I have been having a hard time with social media. It’s like our lives are based on it. How many likes we get. How many friends we have. How many events we are invited to. Our relationship status. Our meme on our pics. Everything! It’s so hard to keep up. I feel like I waste all my time trying to fit it on social media. It’s so much to keep up with and a lot of pressure. You don’t fit in if you aren’t in with it. I have lost some friends because of it and I’m starting to get depressed. I’m not sure what to do anymore about it. Help!

Signed,
N

Dear N~

Oh, I can relate! Not with all of it but some.
You didn’t state your age but I’m guessing you are younger than me. So, in my defense, I wasn’t raised on social media and miss the talking face to face days.

One big problem with social media is you don’t know what all the feelings are or the true communication behind many posts. Another problem is we count these “friends” as signs of approval as being human. And, lastly, we use it as a way to engage and remove people easily without much human thought since we are associating people as technology.

I have a few suggestions for you. Some may work for you and some may not but you can see what you can work with.

1. I want you to know that you are a person! Behind your screen names you are living, breathing, being apart of our society, and actually can feel on the inside and out. This is important because we get locked into social media as a thing or name and not actually human. You are both human and important! Find your human self more valuable than the social media name you are. Once you start finding your real value as a person contributing to our world then your online approval will not be as important.

2. Limit your social media to close friends and family. Having 1700 friends means absolutely nothing if they are not there for you as a person. I have over 80,000 followers on my Finding You (www.facebook.com/findingyoubook) page on Facebook. My personal page is friends and family of only close to 300. I don’t allow many people from the outside in my personal space. Your close people won’t except all of that from you. Lose that stress. Lose some people!

3. If you feel bad about removing people then unfollow them for a bit to see if that helps. I will admit, I have a person on my Facebook friends who I want off …… but don’t. She posted a mean post about me due to issues she had that were misunderstood. I tried to explain but she was set in her way. I don’t want that negativity in my life or on my fb. I left her on only because we have mutual friends that I didn’t want this to cause drama with or cause an uproar. She’s stays in the back of my mind and it torments me. I need to follow my own advice and delete but I value my other friends and don’t want them to feel uncomfortable. So, I do understand how social media can wrap you. I would suggest to block them and you miss out on nothing but gaining sanity.

4. I wrote a blog about not letting social media value you. Please scroll down on www.tonidowrey.com and read that. There is more information that might be useful.

5. If you feel depressed, you might want to speak to a professional to help you with that. Sometimes we just need to reset and that helps. If not, seek help to guide you through this and get professional advice.

Life is fun with many adventures we only get once. We need to enjoy it all while we can because it will be gone sooner than we expect. Have fun with life and find the good. Choose to be happy in all situations. It takes some time but feeling great actually isn’t fake, it’s fun!

I hope this helped in some way. I want you to know that you are important as a person. Not as a meme. Not as a tweet. Not as a post. But as a person. Be a great person and the other stuff will fall into place. I would really like you to follow up with me and if you need any other advice, please message me!

Keep moving forward~

Toni Dowrey

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