CHARLOTTE – This is part of an ongoing series.

Know when to walk away.

Sometimes you have to put your phone down and walk away. Either because of losing too much time to scrolling or because of getting angry over comments.

Endless scrolling is terrible for your mental health no matter how curated your content is, the more time spent on social media has a direct effect on higher instances of depression.

This often occurs because of the highlight reel effect. Everyone shows off the best parts of their life on social media and none of their struggles.

When we see that then we often feel that we’re not measuring up to everyone doing so awesome.

Then there’s also doom scrolling, where endless bad news and the reactions to it suck us in and it feels like never-ending doom.

Set time restrictions for how long you’ll spend scrolling each day or in one session. Use alarms or management apps if you need to because it’s easy to not realize how quickly 3 hours can go by.

Comments that make us angry are another reason to walk away from social media. And like scrolling, triggering comments can come up no matter how well we’ve curated our feeds.

Set parameters or rules for when you will bother reading a comment exchange or participate and when you feel yourself getting upset, walk away and do something with your hands to get your mind off of it.

Decide when you’ll walk away and stick to it, don’t leave it to happen by chance, because it won’t.