{"id":19331,"date":"2025-08-15T18:48:29","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T18:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/social.coldstreams.com\/?p=19331"},"modified":"2025-08-20T21:40:35","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T21:40:35","slug":"social-media-and-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/2025\/08\/15\/social-media-and-stress\/","title":{"rendered":"Social media and stress"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Far too many people on social media live their lives in a constant state of perpetual outrage. Every post or nearly every post they share on FB, IG, X or Bluesky is to express their outrage over something in the world – typically things over which they have no control and have little or no impact on their own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are constantly angry and upset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Studies have shown that harboring this degree of anger increases stress and increases your risk of heart attack by a factor of 2x to 5x.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s a story of woman who seems to have run into this – she had both real world, mostly non-controllable stress but was also stressed about everything else over which she had no control, might not be real, and has no immediate impact on her own life:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Nearly Died From ‘Broken Heart Syndrome’ \u2014 And Here’s Why You Could Be At Risk, Too<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the very least, we\u2019re all being subjected to the truly head-banging soundtrack of everything that\u2019s going wrong in this world, including deep-rooted racism, misogyny, gun violence, natural disasters, political turmoil, the aftershocks of a global pandemic, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And these chronic stressors \u2013\u2013 in addition to isolated events \u2013\u2013 are heavy contributors to any given person\u2019s cumulative stress level. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She suffered cardiac arrest in surgery – and the team said it appeared to have been caused by stress, leading to a weakening of the heart muscle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is now in therapy learning to handle stress issues better – and hopefully learning to step away from the culture of perpetual outrage. But perhaps not, unfortunately. She goes on to write:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And if I \u2013\u2013 an upper-middle class, straight, white homeowner, with a master\u2019s degree, community support, a stable of resources, and an incredible amount of privilege \u2013\u2013 can\u2019t take care of myself in America today enough to avoid stress-induced heart failure, then how can anyone?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She is thus worrying on behalf of others over which she has no control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more of her story and you’ll see she worries about even more which does not affect her and over which she has no control. She has much to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worry about those things you can control – don’t worry about those things you cannot control.<\/em> Instead, identify how to work around them or cope with them by modifying things you can control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How the culture of perpetual outrage causes some to be in a constant state of fear and anger, leading to significant health problems. It is not a healthy way to live.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16,359,19,24,31,348,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-of-perpetual-outrage","category-emotion","category-everything-is-awful","category-fear","category-in-practice","category-mental-health","category-public-health","category-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coldstreams.com\/social\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}