Despite my best efforts, my various social media accounts have stopped growing. In fact, they haven’t just stopping growing, they’re actively declining. I’ve lost thousands of followers on Twitter and over 100 thousand followers on Instagram. The Emotional Support Lady Instagram account refuses to hit 40k and has hovered between 39.8k and 39.9k for months causing me more anguish than I would like to admit. Every time I log on to social media, I worry about what number I am going to see because, even though I know better, my self-worth is at least partially tied to the number of followers on my screen. And each time it goes down, I feel my self-esteem take a hit. I start to question why I am trying so hard to have this career if my own followers don’t even want to follow me anymore. I wonder if I am less compelling or likable than I was a few years ago, when all my accounts were growing instead of dwindling. I worry I have lost my touch or my humor or my looks. I fear I had a chance to really “be someone” but I didn’t pull it off and now it will be an uphill battle to support myself and my various projects because I no longer have a big enough social media imprint to matter or feel safe.
Yikes! That’s a lot of negative thoughts directly tied to strangers on the internet. But I don’t think I am alone in my struggle to prevent social media from negatively impacting my mental health. (And the irony of being a mental health advocate who primarily shares her work on social media admitting this isn’t lost on me.) Social media can be really, really bad for our mental health. But it can also be a place of community, support and psychoeducation. It is not all positive or all negative. I believe that it is our relationship with how we interact with social media that swings it more one way or the other. And luckily that relationship—unlike other people’s content or engagement—is something we actually have some control over.
I have had to work hard over the years to not let my social media presence control my life. There was a time when I forced myself to tweet a joke every single day. Whenever something remotely funny happened IRL, I immediately had to recreate it for an Instagram video. Every moment and thought weren’t for me. They were valuable material to mine for content so my following would grow, so I could have more power to open more doors and make more money. This is not a great way to go about your life. But at the same time, I can’t simply walk away and never post again. I have built my career online and I am so thankful for the opportunity to do so. I also genuinely like creating content and sharing my life with all of you. And I have a bunch of projects I need to shamelessly promote. Getting rid of my social media isn’t a viable option for me. But shifting how I approach it is. That shift isn’t quite where I want it to be yet, but I am actively working on it.
I’ve realized that there are three main components to changing my relationship with social media and they deal with my content output, my expectation for engagement and how I take in other people’s posts. Each component has its own set of challenges. When it comes to content output, I have been trying to find a good balance of posting somewhat regularly without pulling my hair out in the process. I used to post to the ESL Instagram 7 days a week. Then I lowered it to five. And now I aim for five but allow myself to miss a day here and there when my schedule is too busy or I am at a loss for ideas. That freedom is something I wouldn’t have allowed myself in the past. I am also doing my best to accept that my output doesn’t need to be consistent. As my book release approaches, I probably need to be posting more, but once the book is out, I look forward to taking a bit of a break. Yes, lately I have had to rack my brain for TikTok ideas vaguely related to the intersection of dating and mental health in an effort to get my book in front of more people’s eyes, but that is similar to someone at a 9-5 needing to work extra hours on a big project. The more I look at my posting as a part of my job and not my identity the less pressure is tied to it.
Changing my expectations around engagement is a bit harder to negotiate. I can’t tell you how many minutes, hours, days, I’ve spent clicking refresh to see how many people liked my post. I’ve deleted countless tweets because they didn’t perform well enough in the first few minutes even if I loved what I wrote. I’ve half-listened to my friends and family because I am too distracted by the increasing number of likes, not so secretly praying that this one will finally go viral. (If only I can go viral one more time! Then I’ll finally be successful enough—whatever that means.) I can feel myself getting sucked into the serotonin burst of validation and praise. It’s a rush like no other. And much like anything with an addictive quality, I need to release the hold it has over my life. Some days I am strong enough to put my phone down, other days I am not. But it is those days when I am strong enough that give me evidence that real life can be more powerful and intoxicating than high engagement. I also have the all-powerful knowledge that even though my engagement is down from what it once was, I am undeniably happier. That’s not just saying something. That’s saying everything I need to know.
The last piece of the social media puzzle deals with me as an audience member. In addition to spending a lot of time creating content, I spend even more time consuming it. I realized pretty quickly that if I want to enjoy the time I waste scrolling on my phone I need to carefully curate what I see. I don’t follow any accounts that make me feel badly about myself. My Instagram feed is mostly animals, memes and therapy posts. I have muted an embarrassing amount of people I know in real life because their constant career announcements are upsetting to me, even if I wish that wasn’t the case. Do I still occasionally check how many likes other people get compared to me? Oh, yeah. But I’m human. Sometimes my worst instincts are going to come out. My goal is for them to come out less and less by setting myself up for success and not hate following anyone.
I am still very much in the process of developing a healthier relationship with social media. And I know this will be extra hard to do as May 3rd (my new publication day) approaches. I have a lot of work ahead of me in terms of untangling my worth from my posts. While I am so excited to announce when my book is officially out, I am equally terrified that not enough people will care. That my posts will get fewer likes than other creators posting about their books. That I will sink into sadness on a day that should be a celebration. But I think it is good that I know these things about myself. I can recognize that this is an area of my life that needs work, which means I have the possibility to get better. And I want that for myself. So I will fight for it, as I simultaneously film TikToks, craft tweets and attempt to understand Instagram Reels.
xoxo,
Allison
I definitely understand the instinct to negatively frame things and compare yourself, and I'm so happy for you that you're in a place where you can work on it :)
As a fan since your YouTube days, I want you to know how much I appreciate the content you continue to make. When I Hate Everyone But You came out, my best friend and I were also in different cities at different schools for the first time (albeit, for professional degrees after our four years of undergrad – do Americans call it undergrad? I digress...). While the exact flavour was a bit different given the younger characters, it still was so meaningful to us to read that story of best friends separated by space, communicating mostly through text, while we were... best friends on different sides of the country, communicating mostly by text. Though I happened to be the one carrying both the Gaby sexuality and Allison anxiety baggage, while my bff was mostly being... well adjusted.
Anyway, reading your book, watching videos, and then listening to your podcast were all things we could share while we were living separate lives. I visited my friend on the West Coast at one point and we went on a roadtrip from Vancouver down to San Diego, and along the way we listened to the Please Send Help audiobook in the car. Now we're living in the same city again, and listen to a few of the same podcasts, but JBU was our starting point and we still regularly will message each other like, "Did you listen to JBU yet?" and, "The thing Allison/Gaby said during topixxx reminded me of when you said [x]." I'd honestly say that the discussions you've had on the show have led to us talking about a lot of really important personal things.
I wanted to share this story just as a reminder that the *number* of followers is not the only way to measure success. The depth of engagement and the degree to which you've affected people's lives – and I assure you, you have positively affected MANY people's lives – is more important than that. So please, when you post something that "only" gets x number of likes, think about each one of those likes on their own, and how even if the number is less than it was the day before, you are still touching people's lives in a profound way – and doing that even once is remarkable and something to be proud of.
P.S. I promise to never unsubscribe xoxo