Social media is a great way to reconnect with long-lost friends, to stay up-to-date with far-flung family members, and to be social – especially for people with mobility restrictions.

Unfortunately, if you are active on social media, you may often find that pastime depressing. That’s because:

1. Your feel that your real life doesn’t measure up to the picture-perfect lives of your “friends” online.
2. You start to notice that you spend an inordinate amount of time with “friends” that you wouldn’t bother to talk to if you saw them in the real world.
3. You begin to notice that an alarming amount of your real LIFE has been dedicated to this form of pseudo-social interaction.
4. You don’t have anything exciting to say about your own life.
5. You feel like a stalker.

How to Turn it Around

• Get offline and get real (in real life, in real time, and face-to-face with real people)
• Dial back your online time by setting yourself a daily time-limit for online social media, and sticking to it
• Be genuine when you are online
• Engage — yeah, really engage and say something — when you are online. (Don’t just hit “like” or “share” and move on)
• Don’t judge people who really DO engage – the last thing the world needs is more online trolls

Sometimes being real is mistaken for “oversharing” or seeking attention. Although that happens, oftentimes it’s just a matter of someone posting something real for a change — a snapshot of where they are at that second in their lives.

They may be sad, lost, hopeless, questioning, uncertain, or just feeling really small. They may also feel guilt or pride or happiness or just need a little moral support. It’s all good.

Real life isn’t always perfect. In fact, some days (or moments in those days) really suck…and that’s ok. In fact, that’s a good thing. Without those days (or moments), we wouldn’t have any comparative way to appreciate the truly awesome days that come our way.