Does a question box hurt self-esteem? Healthy ways to use social media

Comparing yourself to other people's question boxes

Your friend's question box gets tons of questions every day. Their answers are always funny and get lots of reposts. Compared to that, your question box only gets 2 to 3 a week.

"Maybe I'm just not appealing." "Maybe nobody cares about me." It's understandable to feel that way. But let me tell you one important thing here.

What you're seeing is their "highlights." They have days when no questions come in, too, and days when they're stuck with boring questions. They probably just don't show those parts.

The number of questions isn't your worth

How many questions arrive in a question box depends on lots of things, like how many followers you have, how often you post, and how many times you've promoted your question box. It has nothing to do with your value as a person.

Of course someone with 1,000 followers and someone with 50 get different numbers of questions. But if one question arrived from your 50 followers, that means 1 in 50 people was interested in you and went out of their way to write and send you a question. That's amazing.

Instead of comparing numbers, value each question that does arrive. With that attitude, keeping your question box going might become more fun.

Know that comparison is built into social media

Feeling down after comparing yourself to others isn't because you're weak. On social media, moments that make you compare yourself to others come with the territory.

What flows through your timeline is mostly happy moments and reports of things going well. Posts about the dull parts of daily life and the nights spent feeling down are hard to come across. In other words, what you're seeing is an "edited" version of other people.

If you compare that small slice to all of yourself, of course you'll feel down. Knowing "This is simply how it's set up, so I end up comparing" might protect your heart a little. When comparing starts to hurt, have the courage to close the screen.

Don't measure your worth in likes

Because the number of questions and the number of likes catch your eye, it's tempting to use them as a measure of your own worth. But those numbers don't decide your value as a person.

On days with lots of reactions and days with few, what's good about you stays the same. Maybe it happened to spread on someone's timeline, or maybe everyone was busy that day. Numbers get swayed by chance like that, too.

If you hand your feelings over to numbers, every day can become unstable: you're on top of the world when they go up and you sink when they go down. Know for yourself the worth you have that numbers can't measure. That becomes the core that keeps you from getting swallowed up by social media.

Take care of your offline self, too

The you inside your question box and social media isn't all of you. Outside the screen, there's a whole world that's yours.

Time spent laughing with friends, time spent lost in something you love, ordinary time spent with family. It's experiences like these, the ones that don't turn into numbers, that make you who you are.

Even on days when you don't feel fulfilled online, try not to get too down. If you put your phone down and go outside, a different view is waiting for you. If you have a place where you belong in both the online world and the real world, the other one can hold you up when one of them isn't going well.

A quiet question box has its good side, too

Don't decide that getting few questions is a bad thing. A busy question box is nice, but a quiet question box has its own kind of good side.

With fewer questions, you can take your time and carefully face each one. You can have real back-and-forth conversations with the people who sent them. You get calm exchanges without being rushed by all the buzz.

What matters isn't quantity but how deep the connections that form there are. A few "deep" exchanges can stay with you more than lots of "shallow" ones. It's okay to accept your question box's pace just as it is.

It's okay to step away when it gets hard

If you feel down every time you look at your question box, try stepping away for a while. Closing your question box isn't losing. It's a smart decision to protect your mental health.

You might think "It'd be such a waste after I went to the trouble of making it," but your mental health matters more. Take a break when you want to, and start again when you feel like it.

Social media and question boxes are both tools to make your life richer. If being pushed around by a tool starts to hurt, change how you use it or let it go for a while. That's a healthy way to deal with it.

Your worth can't be measured by how many questions your question box gets.