A 'positive' subreddit made me realize how harmful social media can be.

I used to spend a lot of time on the social skills subreddit to help me with my issues. I found some really good info there, but I often found myself feeling bad while scrolling. Like I felt anxiety or dread when checking out the site and could never put my finger on why.

Fast forward to now and I have have a therapist that I absolutely love and I've made so much progress. I'm not where I want to be, but I've stopped feeling completely worthless all the time and occasionally catch myself being hopeful. I have since deleted X and Instagram and haven't checked that subreddit in years.

Yesterday I checked back in on social skills and I finally realize why it made me feel bad. It's *so* much negativity. This might seem obvious, but I always viewed that place as a safe space on the internet focused on support and encouragement and if I felt bad I just wasn't getting it. But no, it was all either "It'll never get better its over" or "You have no friends because you suck". After spending so much time learning real coping skills and how dangerous it is to be defeatist or to berate or label yourself it shocked me that that's 90% of this support "sub" and I wondered if it's always been like this. It probably has. So I finally muted that place and might do away with social media altogether as my mental health has only improved since doing so. Deleting reddit is a little harder though lol but I'll get there. I only wish I'd realized this when I was younger because only now am I seeing how stuff like this made it so much worse.