SOVA Blog

by Moderator ★

Posting About the Hustle

August 20, 2020 in Social Media Guide

It is incredibly easy to be busy nowadays. If anything, it’s encouraged. Our culture has told us that we should take advantage of all of the 24 hours in the day so we can be our best selves and as successful as we can possibly be. The time in between classes and/or work should be filled with time working out or learning a new skill or networking. Being busy is a good thing, and constantly being on that grind should be the goal.

Quarantine has been no exception to this. In fact, you may remember the beginning of lockdown, where everyone talked about using the time indoors as an opportunity to pick up new hobbies, work on projects that they didn’t have time for, and somehow be even busier than they were before.

And because we can’t avoid it nowadays, social media takes this to another level. Social media gives us several platforms to talk about how busy we are. It can be chronicling everything we’re doing that day on our stories, posting about still working on an assignment with a 3:00 AM timestamp, or even just texting friends long paragraphs about how much we need to do.

Letting people know how busy we are isn’t a new thing though. You may have had face-to-face conversations where a friend goes off for minutes on end about the millions of things they have to do in response to a simple “how are you?” Talking and showcasing how much someone needs to do is known as “busy bragging,” and while very rarely intentional, comes with a lot of unintentional effects.

Most of the time, when we want to talk about how busy we are, it’s because we just need a reason to let out everything we’re going through and getting it out in the open. However, there is some satisfaction and validation people may feel whenever they talk about how overwhelmed and busy they are and want to keep seeking that out. In turn, being on the receiving end of the busy bragging can make the listener feel like they’re not doing enough and need to be on the same level as the busy person.

Social media can heighten these feelings of incompetence, competition, and just generally bad feelings about yourself for not doing enough. While it can help by posting and commiserating in misery with others who are doing the same assignments and studying for the same tests, social media can also increase our desire for that validation when people respond or even just see how busy we are. By seeing posts about peers and friends getting ahead on assignments and activities – even if you’re not taking the same classes or in the same field – you may feel ashamed that you’re not doing the same amount of work, or that you need to work harder, or your lifestyle isn’t worth sharing about because it’s not as “productive.”

It’s totally fine to post that pile of books and papers drowning your desk and computer during finals week. It’s also okay to post progress pictures about things you’re passionate about or proud of, like yourself post-workout or that thesis that you’re so close to finishing. At the same time though, constantly posting about being busy can ironically make you less productive since it’s taking time away from what you need to do and can not only overwhelm you by trying to come up with the perfect way to talk about how busy you are, but can also overwhelm followers and friends you follow you who are possibly going through the same thing.

At the end of the day, balance is key whenever posting about anything. It’s also important to remember that you don’t need to force yourself to be busy all the time, and being productive and hustling also includes time for yourself and taking breaks where you need to. These breaks can include social media, where you hopefully don’t have to see a stream of posts about that paper you’re taking a break from and can relax with cute animals instead.

Have you ever posted about how busy you are online? Do you usually post when you’re busy? Do you see posting about being busy as a form of stress relief, or as something else?

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by Moderator ★

Practicing Radical Self-Care

August 14, 2020 in LINKS

Self-care has become a term that always pops up when talking about mental health and wellness. The most common image is that of meditating, taking a bath, or doing a face mask. And while this is great, self-care is so much more than that. While these moments of nurture are helpful, self-care is a radical act for many as they learn to put their needs, emotions, and well-being first.

You may have heard the name Angela Davis pop up a lot recently. As an activist for Black lives and education for decades, she well knows the toll that not just activism, but living as a Black woman can have mentally and physically. We wanted to include the video below where she talks about radical self-care and why it’s so important to be able to prioritize ourselves and do what we need to do to make sure that we’re okay. She specifically talks about this is important for those who participate in activism (and can be prone to burnout because of how heavy the content can be as well as taking care of others) and those from marginalized groups who have historically been told that they do not matter.

Check it out below!

How do you practice self-care? Is self-care something that’s important to you?

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Do You Have a Wearable?

August 13, 2020 in Social Media Guide

The idea of having technology in your watch seems like something out of a science fiction novel at first, with the screen popping up in the air in a bright neon blue or green. Even twenty years ago, a digital watch with a timer on it felt super futuristic. But today, with at least 1 in 5 people wearing, and actively using, some sort of wearable on their wrist, it’s increasingly becoming the norm to have a mini-computer on you at all times.

Wearables (literally wearable technology) most often include things like smartwatches or a wearable fitness tracker (like a Fitbit). They’re designed to connect with your phone through an app and help keep track of things like your heart rate, act like a remote with your music, and can keep you connected by sending you notifications from your phone. The more complex they get, the more they can do, like answer phone calls. 

This is where it gets tricky, though. Being constantly connected to your device can have its benefits – for example, you can know right away if an emergency contact is reaching out or if there’s something urgent you need to respond to right away. It can help you develop goals and keep track of habits, including those that can benefit your mental health. For example, you can set goals to get a certain amount of steps a day to encourage activity and making sure you’re not staying in one place, and like we talked about last week, you can keep track of your sleeping habits. 

Wearables have also increasingly become methods of improving and monitoring mental health too. Apple Watches has an app on their device that helps you with deep breathing, and many mental health experts and researchers are starting to use wearables as a way to track patients’ mental health and keep an eye out for symptoms. If something seems troubling – like constantly high heart rates or prolonged periods of sleep, experts can reach out to the wearer to see how they’re doing. 

Constantly being connected to your device and technology can also be really stressful, too. Notifications can already heighten your anxiety, and getting them the second they happen can make that anxiety feel even higher. It’s easy to put your phone on “do not disturb” and put it in another room to avoid notification anxiety, but that’s not really a solution if your wrist is buzzing the second you get a text. Additionally, constantly getting notifications can be distracting from work you might be doing, and the anxiety with not getting that work done can start building up. There might be the opposite effect as well: knowing that you could be getting notifications but aren’t getting any can make you start worrying that no one wants to reach out to you, which can then lead into snowball thinking about your relationships and whether people like you or not.

If you lean into more perfectionist tendencies, those habit and goal trackers can cause you to experience symptoms of anxiety and depression as well. If you’re not meeting the goals you set for yourself or dismiss reminders from your wearable to accomplish a task, you may feel like that’s reflective of your self-worth and your ability (or what you think is a lack thereof) of your productivity.

So, with all of this, wearables can both benefit and harm your mental health, just like any other technological device. Luckily, there are some solutions that you can try out if you do feel like wearables might be increasing your anxiety. For example, you can choose which apps send you notifications (do you really need to get a buzz on your wrist about a sale?), and it might lead you to make the decision to mute group chats so you’re not constantly getting reminders on your wearable. You can also choose not to use a a wearable as a habit tracker if you feel that it would only cause more stress.

As technology continues to grow, our access to them continues to increase. Finding the balance between what is useful and what can be stressful depends on the person, but it’s a learning process as we continue to adjust to how much more connected to technology we have become.

Do you own a wearable? Do you think it’s affected your mental health in anyway? What do you like or dislike about it?

Our team also has a study that looks into wearable/smartphone use and monitoring mental health! If you, or someone else you know, is interested, you can check it out here.

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by Moderator ★

Tracking Your Sleep with Tech

August 7, 2020 in LINKS

Okay, we know, using technology to help your sleep doesn’t make much sense. It’s almost a widely accepted known fact that using technology as much as we do can actually damage our sleep habits and patterns, especially when using it in bed and during nighttime. If you haven’t been sleeping that well though, you may need some extra support getting the recommended 8-ish hours of sleep a night.

If you feel that your sleep health has been affected recently, you’re not alone either. With the stress and anxieties that have been, well, everywhere for the past few months, you might have been doomscrolling and finding it hard to get off your phone before bed. You might have been taking more naps during the day because you’re confined inside your home so much of the time and have nothing else to do, which then in turn makes it harder to sleep at night. Sleep disorders are also very common among those who have anxiety and/or depression, and with symptoms of these two mental illnesses increasing, and staying this way, due to COVID, these sleep disorders are likely to affect people more frequently now.

Making it a habit to monitor your sleep in the hopes of improving it might not only affect how well you sleep, but may improve your mental health as a whole. It’s a way to organize and feel productive and actively making changes to an important part of your overall health. You can keep a sleep journal by your bed, for example, or you can refer to some of the apps we’ve collected below. 

Just as a reminder though, just like any other habit tracking method, you shouldn’t rely on these organizational tools and use them as a measuring tool about how productive you are. If you end up taking a long nap for a few days in a row or don’t see improvements right away, or even if you are doing well but then only get a few hours of sleep one night, that’s okay! Overall, we hope that finding some method of tracking your sleep can help you take a step back and see what your sleep habits are like and how you can improve your sleep, mood, and mental health to feel like the best you.

If you have a Fitbit or smartwatch, you likely have a tool on there that tracks your sleep already – check the corresponding app for it on your phone to see if they do! Other than that, check out some of the free apps below:

Sleep Cycle
Sleep Watch
Sleep Score

What are your sleeping habits like? How much sleep would you say you get per night? Has your sleeping patterns changed recently?

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by Moderator ★

Can You Recreate Socializing in School Online?

August 6, 2020 in COVID-19, Social Media Guide

For most of us, especially those in younger generations, we likely interact with people on social media as much as we do face-to-face communication, if not even more. It’s both a blessing and a curse to constantly have access to those we care about, and instead of having to arrange plans to meet up with someone to see them, they can simply be a text message, phone call, or DM away.

However, there’s something about meeting up in person and talking face-to-face that social media simply can’t recreate. COVID has proved this as our in-person interactions have drastically decreased but our screen time tells us that we have spent hours upon hours on social media apps every week. You may have spent hours texting friends before quarantining, but when it starts substituting going out to grab food with them, for example, it just doesn’t feel as satisfying.

Those who are going back to school over the next few weeks might be feeling this more than ever. No matter what your school district or university’s plan is, there’s a really high chance that your interactions with your peers are going to be remarkably different. You probably aren’t going to be seeing your friends everyday in the classes you’re excited to share together or trying to find the best way to “accidentally” encounter your crush on campus. 

We can’t give the perfect advice about how to recreate school interactions online – it’s something that’s never really happened before. How do you take the more fun parts about school, like meeting up at a friend’s locker or studying in the common areas of a dorm, and recreate them virtually? How can you distinguish that from how you usually interact with them on social media? 

With all of this considered, we want to help remind you that getting an education is vital, but there are so many other factors that make school important. Sleepily complaining about classes first thing in the morning and rushing to finish a homework assignment with your friends in the cafeteria as chaos ensues around you. In a way, these social interactions are not just helpful towards your development, but they also help provide some sort of stress relief with the anxieties that come with school. Socializing during school hours – even basic interactions like saying hi to a classmate or teacher in the hallway – can boost moods and make students feel less alone. The absence of that, no matter how small these interactions are, can have a severe effect if school becomes just class time with no casual socialization.

So while we don’t have any solutions on how to really recreate these social settings, we hope that the transition comes with opportunities to talk to your friends, classmates, and teachers in that more relaxed, casual setting. It can be as silly as changing the background on Zoom to your school hallway when you talk to the friends from school that you interact with on a daily basis, or maybe even responding to a classmate’s story or Snap that you follow but don’t usually talk to.

Is there anything you miss about school? How would you recreate certain parts of school that you miss on social media?

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by Moderator ★

How Social Media “Jokes” about Mental Health

July 30, 2020 in Social Media Guide

There’s still a long way to go in how we talk about mental health. Stigma, a lack of accessible knowledge about mental health, and the media are just a few of the reasons as to why many, regardless of age, can have incorrect information about how people coping with their mental health and show symptoms of mental illness live, behave, and think. This may require some explanation to the person to educate them at best, and can be really harmful to someone at its worst.

This includes how mental health and mental illness is discussed online. Although younger generations – AKA the ones who are most likely to be using social media – have had shifting views about mental health and illness and are more open to talk about them, they also aren’t immune from slipping dangerous, harmful language about mental health and illness into memes and jokes. 

Two recent examples have included the social media response to instances involving Kanye West and Megan Thee Stallion. These are two incredibly different situations and cannot be directly compared, but if you were online as either situation was trending, you might have seen similar reactions to their mental health.

There was a lot of misinformation about bipolar disorder and how it affects those who are diagnosed with it as Kanye was posting tweets, and even a lot of people reacting to him as if it was a spectacle (Halsey, who also has bipolar disorder, commented about this as well). Megan, who is recovering from a traumatic incident of gun violence, was met with jokes and memes about what happened to her, and she even came online to explain the hurt she is still going through and how wrong it is for people to belittle that. 

It is important to address here that both Kanye and Megan are Black, and the way that Black mental health is not only stigmatized in their own communities, but is ignored or not taken seriously outside of them, is problematic. For Megan, a Black woman, the jokes, dismissal, and ignorance about her mental health are even more damaging.

There’s no way to control the stream of jokes, damaging opinions, and memes online, especially when a particular event is trending and many people are talking about it at once. There’s also no way to educate them all, and it can even be hard to educate the few people you may be in contact with. Despite all of this however, people can use this time to learn more about mental health and how it affects other communities and share this instead of engaging online. Luckily, although the jokes are unfortunately still there, there does seem to be an increasing number of tweets and responses that talk about why these jokes and memes are wrong, showing that progress is possible.

How is mental health discussed on your social media feeds? Do you talk about mental health online?

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by Moderator ★

A Fresh Start

July 27, 2020 in Be Positive

Although it’s a time for relaxation, summer can easily feel mundane. For those on summer break, the lack of routine or structure can make the days feel like they’re all blurring together, and for those who work from Monday to Friday, even doing work during this time can feel sluggish and slower because of the heat. This is even more true this summer, where there’s less to do and we’re confined to our homes most of the time. 

As a result, Mondays lately can feel…just like every other day. Simply put, there’s nothing new or exciting to it. For some, Mondays are the dreaded start of the work week but at home – even though you have something in your routine, doing so in a space that you’re already spending most of your time in and isn’t meant for your job can make your job and the tasks associated with it more difficult to complete. Regardless of what you’re doing, it’s easy to just pick up your phone and get sucked into hours of doing nothing but refreshing apps, doomscrolling, or getting lost in various YouTube videos.

So to no one’s surprise, Mondays gets a bad rep. We’re not going to try and convince you to make it the best day ever, but in times like these where you might be starting your work week from home (once again) or just feeling stuck in a loop of boredom and dread, making each day separate from each other and special in its own way can make a huge difference.

To make Mondays a bit more special, we recommend doing something that’s a bit more motivational or even completely new to make the upcoming week different than the ones before it. This could mean starting the week off by having your favorite kind of breakfast, sitting down for a few minutes to write down your goals for the week, or downloading a new app to try out for that week. If you’ve been putting off something you’ve wanted to do for a long time, you can possibly use Mondays to at least start chipping away at it too. You can also do this on Sunday too, since it’s the official start of the week, and you can do these new activities as a way to combat the “Sunday Scaries.”

Even if it doesn’t feel like it lately, the way we feel on Mondays can be a marker for how we feel for the rest of the week. By giving it a little more emphasis and using it as an opportunity to give yourself a fresh start for the days ahead, you might find yourself in a better mood the rest of the week too.

Are you on summer break? Are you working? What are Mondays usually like to you? How do you feel about Mondays?

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by Moderator ★

Meditation Podcasts

July 24, 2020 in LINKS

Usually, we listen to podcasts to get some sort of information. It might be the news, entertainment, or education, but whatever kinds of podcasts you listen to (if you do listen to them), you probably do so with the intention of paying attention so you can get something out of it. 

Because of this, podcasts aren’t often our first reference for something to relax to. It might be for some – you might not even pay attention to podcasts, instead using them to have voices in the background while you focus on something else, for example. However, podcasts likely include multiple, louder voices having a conversation, which doesn’t necessarily create the most relaxing atmosphere.

That being said, meditation podcasts are still a thing. We’ve covered a ton of meditation apps before, which usually do include some sort of guided voice narrating you through breathing exercises or a mindfulness activity. The podcasts that we’ve gathered below for you to check out perform the same or similar sessions, but don’t require any external downloading. Some also provide information about mental health and mindfulness. Mindfulness done through podcasts episodes also means that new episodes are always being released so that there’s always something new to meditate on.

Check them out!

The Meditation Podcast

Mindful Meditations

Meditation Minis

Untangle

Do you listen to podcasts? If so, which ones do you listen to, and why do you like them? Would you consider listening to podcasts about mental health?

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by Moderator ★

The Toll of Activism Online

July 23, 2020 in Social Media Guide

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Participating in causes to help make a difference and support the underprivileged can be an incredibly rewarding experience. Social media has made activism that much easier too – think of the hashtags and fundraisers people post about or how simple it is to repost other people’s posts on your story about important issues and how to get more information about the topic. Social media can also help you learn about issues that you may have not heard of otherwise (think of the current situations in Yemen and the Philippines, for example), and just exposure to campaigns can lead to a significant increase in support of the people being affected.

This accessibility is incredibly helpful and can still make a difference, even if it’s just providing the smallest bit of support, but it can also be taxing and overwhelming. Self-care and maintaining one’s mental health has become an important topic for activists, especially since the subject matter is most likely going to be painful on some level. Even if social media puts you in a physical safe space to talk about these issues, you can still feel a secondhand effect (known as compassion fatigue) and can lead to burnout. People who participate in activism online are more likely to have a tendency to gravitate towards issues that are related to their identity (i.e. their race, gender, or religion), and having that personal connection can lead to heightened anxiety and depression effects.

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Just the exposure to these issues on social media can have an effect on your mental health, even if you’re not participating in online activism. There might be guilty feelings involved because you aren’t doing anything, and some of the wording on some of the posts can almost feel accusatory if you don’t get involved, which can further those feelings of guilt. Looking at posts can not just be upsetting, but can also make you angry and the bad things going on, and you can feel overwhelmed thinking about how nothing you do will be enough.

Both participating in and witnessing online activism can be hard and triggering, especially for people of color and other marginalized groups. It can be tough figuring out how much you want to and can support, and sometimes you might really care about an effort, but it can hit too close to home or be too mentally exhausting for you to get involved in. Your level of comfort with what you engage in online – activism or not – is for you alone to understand and defend, whether it’s on deciding who you want to follow or if you need filters on posts.. Whether the social justice content is too triggering or it’s something you make sure to talk about and participate in, your mental health should be one of your top priorities.

Do you participate in activism on social media? What causes do you post about? Are there times where this feels overwhelming for you? If so, what do you do?

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by Moderator ★

What is Your “Song of the Summer?”

July 20, 2020 in Be Positive

Try to think of the memories you have of last summer, the summer before that, and the summer before that. Think of the fun, cliche summer memories you have had throughout your life, whether it be in the car listening to the radio, hanging out by the pool, or watching fireworks and lighting sparklers during the muggy nights. Do you have songs attached to them?

Music plays a huge role in our memory. There is evidence to show that music can evoke incredibly strong memories due to its role in activating many psychological functions such as imagery and attention. That’s why if you hear a song after a long time –  even if you don’t have any attachment to it – you’re likely to recall some sort of event with it and get some sense of nostalgia.

If you follow pop culture at all, you may have heard of something called the “Song of the Summer.” While we all have our own music tastes and preferences with certain genres, the summer memories you recalled earlier likely have some sort of earworm, pop hit that was everywhere at the time associated with it. Traditionally, these songs are meant to be fun, upbeat, and something you can play at barbecues, at the beach, and generally out loud with people you enjoy being around (even if you can get sick of these songs really easily). These fun songs, because of the way they sound, are there to invoke happy summer memories later on, because that’s what summer is meant to be, fun!

Recently, just like everything else in our lives, the “Song of the Summer” is completely different this year, if one exists at all. Despite some continuing with summer activities, we’re still less likely to and discouraged from gathering in large groups to do the more cliche summer activities. Because many of us are continuing to socially distance and spend most of our time limiting our social interactions and staying at home, summer feels like it shouldn’t even be celebrated this year. Is there even a 2020 “Song of the Summer” that we can reminisce about years down the line?

The “Song of the Summer” can still exist though, even if it’s not used in the typical fun-in-the-sun way. Fun music can encourage a more positive mood, and no matter where you are, we encourage you to explore summer playlists, whether curated by music streaming platforms, your friends, or even influencers, to see if there are any upbeat songs that you find yourself enjoying. You may not be going to the beach every weekend and playing these songs on repeat on the way there, but even listening to these kinds of songs can almost recreate that feeling and help you feel better when everything going on can make you feel sad, lonely, and helpless.

You can still blast these songs at home, in the car, or even in virtual hangouts with your friends, and although it’s not the same, it’s still a way to get your mood to improve in a time when it’s likely to feel more down than not.

Do you enjoy mainstream pop music? What have been your songs of the summer in the past? What songs are you enjoying now?

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