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Unfollowing For Your Mental Health

There is not shame in unfollowing someone you know.

By Emmy GarciaPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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"Unfollow anyone on social meida and in real life who does not make you feel empowered, informed or inspired."-Unknown

The question on whether you should unfollow someone you use to know on social media can feel overwhelming especially if it is someone you know such as a friend, family or your favorite celebrity. There’s no shame in unfollowing someone such as friend, family or celebrity for reasons such as a loss of connection and feelings of comparison.

First let’s begin by saying that we follow people we know because we care to see what they have to share. We follow people because we’re engaging with a ‘like,’ or we’re engaging with a common interest. But what if we suddenly don’t care to follow them anymore. I’m sure some of us just stop showing attention or likes on pages we follow. What about those we follow just because? What about those we follow who we knew from years ago? How are they still relevant to us today? We often don’t question ourselves on why. But here’s why. We have an emotion connection to that person. We don’t unfollow people because we feel a sense of loss, and we feel our popularity based on numbers of followings aren’t high once we unfollow. This then affects our mental health.

When we are not interested in what someone has to post, it will allow room for us to find other people who share the same interest as us. We don’t need to follow accounts that are bombarded with nonsense, that aren’t aliened to what we believe or like. We don’t have to feel shameful if that account is someone we know. Unfollowing a relative or a friend you’ve loss connections with leaves room for new connections to flourish. Some of us follow friends and relatives that remine in contact with us and follow us on social media, but that’s not what I’m writing here today. I’m talking about the ones that you don’t hear from. The ones who don’t check up on you, the ones that don’t like your post, but you like there’s. what does this ultimately say about us? Unfollowing those people regardless if you once knew them is the root of feeling satisfied instead of ashamed because we can let go. When we do this, we can accept and moving on, and we can lose the emotional feeling behind who that person was to us. This gives room for new engagement with others and we are then able to focus on ourselves by creating space for what we want to appear in our feeds.

Often times we feel like we are constantly comparing ourselves to others of social media whether it’s your friend or someone you look up to like a celebrity, we can feel empty within ourselves. This is damaging our confidence and our needs for acceptance. When realistically no one is perfect. We all have our flaws and what we post on social media is advertised to look perfect; to seem perfect. Unfollowing people who you feel like you’re constantly comparing your life to theirs is toxic and damaging to yourself. Once we take initiative to unfollow, we can rebuild our self-esteem.

Despite on whether the number of followings go down, you can remain authentic by sticking to what is true to you and your mental health about these issues. We need to filter out what is not serving us, by removing those that aren’t present in our now, those that are making us feel less than. This ties in with self-love and knowing what feels genuine to you.

The goal at the end of the day is to be consciously aware of who you are following. Don’t feel ashamed for unfollowing someone you use to know or know. We are responsible for how we feel. If we choose to continue to follow others who aren’t into contact with us in the physical, then why continue to follow online? This is the main root to why we feel lonely.

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About the Creator

Emmy Garcia

-Follow me on ig at _emmyy.g

-Email me at [email protected] for comments, feedback and support

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