What You See Is What You See

Do you ever go on social media and think: Why is everyone else having an awesome day except me?!

Sometimes it is hard to scroll through posts of people taking great selfies or parties they were at without feeling left out – or like everyone is doing better than you are.

The fact is: that is not true. What you see on social media is literally just what you see—something someone chose to post to represent themselves. Usually we don’t want to share negative things about ourselves because we want people to think good things about us—how fun, attractive, athletic, interesting we are.

Take a look at our post Goodbye, Headclutcher to see how young people with depression usually take the same happy-looking pictures as everyone else does. You don’t know what is going on in someone’s life by what they post on social media.

You might realize this – but when you are in a bad mood, it is harder to think straight. That means you might have some “Debbie Downer” glasses on—where it is hard not to shine a negative light on everything you see.

WARNING—when you are in a bad mood, it might NOT be a good time to look at the happy pictures or awesome-looking selfies your friends have posted on Instagram. Try distracting yourself by taking a walk or doing something that you think is fun. Talk to a friend, or write about it in a journal. Then when you are feeling better, you can enjoy your friend’s posts for what they really are—just a happy picture—without it making you feel worse.

Do you agree? What do you do when you are in a bad mood?