Facebook...The Good or the Bad...Your Say!

[blondguy]

Hi Everybody

Without a doubt Facebook is one of the best social media sites. I have been on FB for a long time and found it invaluable yet very stressful at times whilst having anxiety and/or depression or even just checking it every day.

Your views on FB, its impact on your mental health, well being, whether good or not so good are more than welcome.

Thankyou for reading my thread topic!

my kind thoughts

Paul

[Dniaiu]

Hi blondguy,

the one positive I've found regarding Twitter is that it's often the fastest way to resolve customer service issues.

If you find a toenail in your burger, an email *may* get a response, filling in a web form *may* get a response, a phonecall will have you on hold for aaaaages, but a tweet will get a response within minutes !!

Otherwise, I feel it's like shouting in an empty, darkened stadium.

[blondguy]

Hi Everyone 🙂

Moon mentioned " the only thing that really gets me down when looking through their FB posts...is that they are all happier than me. with only good, exciting,fulfilling, lovely things happening to them in the places they go and
wonderful things they do"

I understand your post crystal clear Moon. Being a mega website (Facebook) people talk about how happy they are when they may miserable when posting.

Dniaiu....Thankyou for taking the time to post and bring a solid positive into the discussion....]

Dniaiu mentioned "the one positive I've found regarding Twitter is that it's often the fastest way to resolve customer service issues" Thankyou so much for this and do major/medium sized companys have a twitter account that they keep an eye on? Any feedback is welcome!

Hi Quirky and CMF....Thankyou heaps for bring up such a good point about Facebook. It is great for family & friends but we are also open to a website that doesnt have any moderation and wont in the future as the United States pride themselves on their 2nd amendment which is 'Freedom of Speech' which unfortunately allows the bad in with the good.

I hope that everyone is doing the best they can

Paul

[Tams20]

Hi Paul,

I’m glad I found this thread as I was just about to post something about this myself. Hopefully I can bring the conversation to life again!

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook... I like it as a tool to share photos etc with people that I don’t see very often, family and friends (including my parents, who live 800km away). But I find that it really messes with my head, particularly around my friends that I DO see... it can trigger depression, anxiety, irritability, sadness, feelings of rejection, worthlessness... I’m Bipolar so if you can name a feeling, I’ve felt it.

Every now and then I deactivate my account for a period of time, until I feel I am ‘resilient’ enough to get back on there. I deactivated it this morning after seeing an exchange between two friends. Friend 1 is a friend I’ve known for a long time and Friend 2 is a relatively new but quite close friend who I’ve been spending time with recently... all it took was them sharing their one year ‘friendiversary’ on each of their pages and I felt like rubbish. Friend 1 posted with a love heart, then Friend 2 did... It was my 1 year friendiversary with Friend 2 yesterday and there was no sharing... and Friend 1 has never done that in the 10 or so years we’ve been friends on Facebook. So then I start hating both of them, after all the things I have done for my new friend, she prefers my old friend, who has never shown me the same appreciation blah blah blah... Can you see what is happening here? I’m 42 and suddenly in my mind I’m back in high school surrounded by frenemies. I hated that period of my life, I’m still a mess now because of it.

I do feel as if my friends sometimes use it to exclude or ignore for effect, as I probably do too... Even though we’re all a long way from high school, some habits are hard to break I guess!

So now I’m in a pit of depression and not feeling good about either of my friends. Am really considering deleting my account entirely, but I do find it useful occasionally. I wish I could just have it to communicate with certain people and not others, but I’d offend people by not being friends with them... aarghhh! I wish I’d never opened an account.

I prefer Instagram - it’s clear that people only share the good bits and it’s not conversational. Just photos.

Anyway, that’s my whinge re: Facebook.

Tams

[Chloe_M]

Hi all,

I actually don't have social media. My parents don't want me to have it and I also think that its too much trouble for what its worth. There's already enough drama IRL as it is.

Well that's my little spiel on social media 🙂

Chloe

[Tams20]

Hi Chloe,

Yes that is very wise - resist it for as long as you can!!

Tams

[Doolhof]

Hi Tams, Chloe and All,

Quite often I just look at the pictures and photos on Facebook. I don't usually read the content. This works well for me!

I have friends who post pictures of their children which I love seeing. Other friends are on a very long travelling holiday and they share their pictures on Facebook.

Relationships can be a hassle if they are in real life or on social media. There are many times I know I have feelings of being hurt when I am sure there has been no real malice or intention from others for me to feel that me. It is me feeling what I feel that makes me upset.

Cheers all from Dools

[Birdy77]

Hey Tams 😊,

What you're experiencing is why I've never engaged in FB or other social media.

There forums are the closest I come to anything like that.

I am 40 and I've resisted it, yes!! My partner too!

Sorry you had to see all that juvenile rubbish today.

Not what you needed ...

🌻birdy

[blondguy]

Hi Tams20 (and thankyou Chloe_M Dools and Birdy for being here and helping :-))

Tams...you mentioned that Facebook " can trigger depression, anxiety, irritability, sadness, feelings of rejection, worthlessness"

I understand you after 34 years of chronic anxiety followed by depression. I found myself checking my FB every day and it started to really have a bad effect on me so I had to put my health first and resign my membership

Your situation is a bit different though as you mentioned that you have your parents on FB. Thats a huge plus to keep signed in.

Please forgive my ignorance as I havent been a member for a long time.....Can you tighten up your privacy controls to avoid the crap that you have had to go through?

Please let us know when convenient for you

My kind thoughts and thanks heaps re-booting my thread too 🙂

Paul

[Lici]

Hi all 🙂 sorry to jump in, I just thought I'd add to the conversation.

I use FB a fair bit these days. I have a love hate relationship with it at times as it's a terrible source of procrastination for me!

I do however love it for the groups I'm in. I do photography for a hobby so I've joined a lot of photography groups and they're always very positive and at times informative as well, plus I have the added bonus of my timeline being full of gorgeous pictures.

I also use the messenger app to keep in touch with friends and family as it's a free way to message them. I find I don't really call people often so having free text messaging is easier.

I find it a good idea to clean out my friends list every so often and unfollow and unlike pages that bring me down etc. I've also unfollowed a few people on my friendslist that post negative things all the time or things that make me angry (such as conflicting political views or racist posts) I'll only unfollow if they're family members though.

I had one person who I didn't really know that well post on one of my statuses venting about pain one time to try some really silly thing (along the lines of the usual "just get out and go for a walk" for depression), it made me so angry at first and I stewed on it for days. Until I realised that I didn't have to reply or be nice, I could just delete her and never see or hear from her again.

I go by the thinking that while everyone is entitled to their opinion, I have the ultimate control on what I want to read and see on my fb wall and who I have on my friendslist. As I'm not a person who lets people in easily or socialises much, I don't have any qualms about removing people when it's needed.

I think the ultimate balance on fb is to know what you'll put up with and to not let anything cross that line - especially if you suffer from mental illness. If something produces anxiety or depression etc then you have to allow yourself to delete it without worrying what people will think. It's easier said than done at first, but once you see that nothing bad will come of it, it's very cathartic to remove things that aren't bringing positivity to your life!

Thanks for reading 🙂

Lici

[blondguy]

Hi Lici!

Thankyou for your inspirational post :-)...You are more than welcome to post as many times as you wish..

You mentioned " the ultimate balance on fb is to know what you'll put up with and to not let anything cross that line - especially if you suffer from mental illness. If something produces anxiety or depression etc then you have to allow yourself to delete it without worrying what people will think"

I really hope you can stick around the forums Lici....

My kind thoughts

Paul