The effect of social media scrolling on your mental health is being talked about a lot at the moment in the media. Instagram are testing what happens when they remove like counts from posts and Pinterest have just started to introduce a suite of mental health tools to help users looking for anxiety and mental health pins.
The impact of all of this on children and young people is yet to be fully understood, but everyone seems to agree that social media is having a negative impact on our mental health. You can read more about this here if you're interested in finding out more.
But social media can also be an incredibly supportive, inspirational space and we all need to take some responsibility to make healthy choices when we scroll, like, follow and connect. Instagram is a favourite at WorryTree HQ, and we've pooled together some of our favourite accounts we like to follow that inspire, motivate and help us feel less alone with our tendency to worry. In fact, there are so many inspiring accounts out there, it was hard to keep it down to just ten!
When you next catch yourself mindlessly scrolling, take half an hour to curate your feed by unfollowing (or you can mute if you're worried you might offend) any accounts that lower your mood or trigger comparison and add some more positive content with some of these:
@mattzhaig - Author and mental health ambassador, Matt's posts are honest, often funny, and always inspiring. He doesn't hold back from talking about his own mental health and we can't wait to buy his forthcoming children's book.
@theblurtfoundation - The Blurt Foundation are dedicated to helping people with depression and their feed is a stream of colourful words of wisdom guaranteed to make you think and give you a lift.
@mellow.doodles - Melissa at Mellow Doodles creates beautiful, inspiring illustrations all focused around mental health and self-care. You can also buy her lovely illustrations in print form.
@therapyintheshed - Lisa is an accredited Psychotherapist based in the UK and her posts are a mixture of insights into her work, uplifting quotes and helpful suggestions. We love her positive, thought-provoking captions and we also love Dave!
@actionhappiness - Action for Happiness is a movement for people building a happier society by making positive changes in people's lives. Follow them on instagram for beautifully illustrated suggestions for how you can make changes in your own life.
@thehappynewspaper - Have you picked up your copy yet? The Happy Newspaper only shares positive news and wonderful people. A genuine breath of fresh air on your feed.
@bryonygordon - Bryony is a journalist, podcaster, writer and underwear runner. She's introduced the concept of mental health mates and her instagram is awash with body positive and mental health messages.
@thrive - Founded by Arianna Huffington, Thrive Global is a movement to end burnout and the culture of workplace stress. Their instagram is full to the brim with inspiring and motivational quotes.
@gabrielletreanor - Gabrielle is a coach, writer and teacher focusing on helping overthinkers' become calm, free and confident. Gabrielle's instagram is authentic and positive, and she's just released a new online course, Worry less for life.
@lisaoliveratherapy - Lisa is a writer and a therapist based in the United States, and shares wonderful words of wisdom and thoughtful ideas to help others.
Hopefully some of these will resonate with you, but if not then go out there and look for people and organisations that share content that makes you feel good (rather than bad, envious or irritated!). Happy scrolling!
Are you following us on the Gram? Come over and say hi to us at @worrytree