Can you imagine your life without social media and the round-the-clock connection with your acquaintances? Without the speed at which your messages deliver to the recipients? Or without social media in general? Definitely no! Instagram is one of those unique platforms that allows you to connect with people and brands irrespective of their location. However, while Instagram makes people more connected than ever, its global adoption has brought forward big concerns about users’ mental well being. It’s not easy to navigate the world of Instagram addiction especially for a social media manager. Caring about its users, InstaBF, a popular Instagram and IGTV provider, has collected several survival tips for Instagram managers’ mental health.
Don’t Multitask
Multitasking seems a greatly beneficial thing. And even though editing images, analyzing your traffic on Google Analytics, answering DMs looks attractive, our brains can’t handle multiple tasks at once. Moreover, multitasking reduces one’s productivity up to 40%! A human brain is not able to deal with more than two tasks at the same time. Besides this, multitasking drains the whole energy of one’s brain tiring as much as nothing else. According to the researches, those who take breaks (at least ten-minute ones) every couple of hours show better results in anything they do including Instagram management. So, to keep your mental state normal while working on an Instagram account, stop multitasking!
Get Rid of the Feed Trash
If you are an active Instagrammer you must have been tempted to compare your “boring” life to those seemingly perfect ones of influencers. But remember, they are all about advertising and even if some of them really lead the life they showcase, it will neither serve nor feed you. Hence, not to fall in a pointless depression, just use the power of the “unfollow” button. Instead, intake the content that contributes your vision and mission and doesn’t clutter your brain with a bunch of unnecessary content.
Don’t Cling to Likes
The invention of the “like” button on Instagram (just as in any other social network) is perhaps the most ingenious way of satisfying one’s need for social validation. On the other hand, it keeps you hooked on the network, come back to count every like every post you make gets. Actually, Instagram has a lot in common with a slot machine – when you trigger the machine the expectation whether it will win or not feels the same as when you open your Insta full of anticipation if your new post has collected more likes and comments. In the core, it is the quality of your interactions on Instagram matters and not the number of likes you have. So, stop counting them to safeguard your mental state. Besides, with the new feature of removing public likes from feeds, chasing likes looks so backward!
Browse Mindfully with Purposefully
Whether Instagram has a potential adverse effect on your mental health or helps you relax during the day is determined by how you use it. Every time you feel the urge to check in your account stop and ask a question – what do you do that? If, for instance, you wonder whether a pretty girl you follow has posted a new picture from her “perfect” life or not, it will be a sheer waste of time. Instead, be sure you have a specific goal in mind every time you log into the platform. That may be interacting with your followers, exploring new brands you might get interested in the products of which, finding inspiration for an upcoming event, watching a tutorial for an evening makeup to apply tonight, etc. And remember, once you log into your account, scroll through the feed and see there’s nothing you would like to engage with, reread the Tip #2!