Great news! There’s a new episode of the Mind Waves podcast out. Our fabulous intern Rosie chats to Luke, Hannah and Amy of the Glasgow Disability Alliance, Dr Heather Cleland Woods from Glasgow University and Jennie Walker from the Mental Health Foundation.
The episode focuses on mental health and social media and over the past few weeks we’ve been taking a look at the three interviews conducted by Rosie. I’d recommend you listen to the episode before you read these – it’s so interesting and under 40 minutes, the perfect thing to listen to when you’re on a walk, doing some yoga or cosying up with a cup of tea. Listen to the podcast here.
The final interview of the episode was with Jennie Walker, a communications and marketing officer for the Mental Health Foundation, Jennie also works on the Mental Health Foundation podcast. Rosie asks Jennie about her early experience with social media and Jennie talks about using her family computer to use websites aimed for young people; Club Penguin, Bebo etc. She acknowledges the benefits of using these websites from a young age, specifically that she believes that an early background of internet use led to her interest in pursuing a career in digital communication. However, Jennie also acknowledges that, due to the newness of the internet at the time, her parents weren’t fully aware of the potential dangers and downsides of the internet. She reiterates that even if you believe that you have adequate safeguarding in place for your children’s online time, they are still probably viewing things that are inappropriate, so it’s important to check in often and monitor their internet use.
Rosie then asks Jennie how we can manage our boundaries with friends and family on social media. Jennie replies that: “boundaries, in any form, are still quite new in our vocabulary today” but the best way to establish boundaries is to think about what you’re using your social media for; to check in with loved ones, to view the news etc. Once you’ve done that, determine the kind of content that adds to your live, and the kind of content that drains you. Jennie urges us to mute or unfollow content that makes you feel bad and think: “why am I using this? could I use it more mindfully? and that way it means… we’re controlling our devices and our online activity rather than it being the other way around.”
If you haven’t listened to the podcast yet, hopefully this blog post has shared enough interesting tidbits to tempt you over to Anchor to listen. While you’re there, why not listen to our other episodes? Rosie also hosted a great episode on exercise and mental health back in August. Click here to take a look at the Mental Health Foundation’s Twitter account.
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