I spent five years without logging into Instagram or Facebook, with the exception of looking at histology questions or answering a message every few weeks. Over the past few months, since I'd had a wealth of free time (a complete luxury), I've developed the bad habit of logging in and scrolling mindlessly.
This past week, in the car driving to visit a student, a friend mentioned to me that she never posted on social media because of anxiety. Interacting with so many people, opening yourself up for inspection and judgement was too intimidating to her. In many ways, I agreed and could relate to those feelings. It made me wonder - is that the same reason I never post on social media? I know that I have some degree of social anxiety. It manifested itself in a weird way when I was younger. In the peak of my teenage years, I would avoid eating meals in front of strangers, which I later read in a parenting book that was a manifestation of social anxiety. In medical school, it pretty much got beat down into the ground because I have to interact with SO MANY people. I only really get extreme anxiety when tabling and approaching students to try to get them to join our club.
In some sense, if we are anxious about something, the best way to overcome it is exposure therapy. You do the thing that makes you the most nervous - and then you realize, this isn't so bad. The fears that I have, they're not real. This would be a good reason for me to post more on social media platforms.
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