How Social Media Aids and Hurts Your Personal Development

by Ryan Biddulph

All products and services featured on this site are independently selected by our authors and editors. If you buy something through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

As my mass unfollow continues – I am into the thousands now – I observe how social media aided and hurt my personal development over the decade plus I have been a blogger.

Aid

I connected with loving, compassionate people who helped accelerate my growth, allowing me to see who I really am. Loving people taught me how to generously serve, how to detach, how to trust in the process and how to appreciate what I have.

Social media also taught me to be on the wrong side of the herd. Most humans live predominantly from fear, attachment and suffering. One quick glance of social media streams today indicates a large percentage of human beings who conditionally feel happy (suffering from rank fear in their minds before the condition manifested) because something happened with another fellow human being.

The same, poisonous, conditional happiness caused almost a full week of:

anger
rage
suffering
anxiety
worry
mental poison

in the same people who harbored a predominant energy of fear in their minds.

Hey; don't shoot the messenger. I think about these things when I'm eating my cornflakes in the morning 🙂

Anyway, I began mass unfollowing *fear* projected by lovely human beings (the humans and their projections are separate entities) because I care not to be caught up in the illusion fear. I am definitely on the wrong side of most current events simply because I take complete control of my life on an intimate level and let circumstances, news and politics slide off of me like water off of a duck's butt, knowing the illusion in each.

Social is also a great mirror because it reflects back to you where you are at. Imagine if you feel angry (fear) that one human left a house after a few years. Feeling increased anger, rage or flat out depression on seeing much of social recently reflects back to you fears you need to face, feel and release to grow as a human being.

Hurt

Social media hurts your personal development because you tend to do what you do not want to do until you become hyper aware of your fears in mind.

I followed so many people I did not really want to follow because I feared:

missing opportunities
losing friendships
not connecting with enough people

even though our values did not resonate. Even worse? I followed people who I picked up some bad habits from, which I own, 100%.

For a long time, I was trying to make friends from a fear energy versus choosing to follow 5, 10 or a few hundred bright lights, wise souls and empowered humans who lived from love, spoke truths and lived predominantly from generous service, detachment and harmony.

Lesson learned; hence the mass unfollow.

Social media is a tremendous teacher because it never spares the rod. Humans do things on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram based on how they choose to think, feel and act.

Observe why you use social media. Pay close attention to how you use social media. You may just learn how social platforms are aiding or hindering your personal development.