Sometimes the internet is a junkyard.  It is where we toss all those loose psychic odds and ends that we don’t want to handle—scraps of feelings and pieces of conflicts that we can’t or won’t process with the people closest to us. 

Over the next couple of posts, I hope to offer you a few tips on how to improve your internet hygiene, so you don’t end up buried under other people’s emotional refuse.

I’d also like it if you’d look at your own online habits, to see if you’re leaving some of your stuff on someone else’s plate or causing yourself some unnecessary trouble.

Why talk about internet hygiene on a mental health blog?  Even if we practice wellness in our lives offline, these practices can be quickly upended by bad habits or careless words we find online.  This is especially true for those of us who spends hours and hours online each day.

So let’s take a look at this junkyard and see what we are discarding and discovering there.

The junkyard:  what it looks like

What do these bad habits look like in practice?

Taking pot shots.  If you’ve spent any amount of time online, you’ve no doubt run into trolls—people whose main purpose is to derail conversations, command attention, and generally piss other people off.  Conversations with trolls quickly devolve into shouting matches and attacks on one’s character, mother, gender, and political affiliation.  These are the folks that hang out at the junkyard for target practice and heap their own unhappiness onto you by stirring up your rage.

The losing battle.  You hop online and end up tangled in an argument on a political forum with people who will probably never share your views.  You leave the conversation either feeling a righteous sense of having done justice or possibly just feeling worse than when you started.  You may tell yourself that you’re genuinely interested in championing your ideas or changing people’s minds, but a part of you know it’s less about changing minds and more about arguing.  If you’re not careful, this can devolve into trolling.

Feeding the worry.  Rather than use the internet as a place to leave your unhappiness, you may end up bringing a bunch home with you.  You go online seeking information and end up gorging yourself on worrisome facts.  You try to self-diagnose your symptoms instead of consulting with your doctor.  After a bitter fight, you find articles declaring your relationship toxic and unsalvageable.  This practice is a bit like salvaging a rusty refrigerator from a junkyard:  you’re taking something once useful and appropriating it for an unhappy purpose.  You think with a bit of cleaning up, it might be helpful to have—if it still works, of course.  Meanwhile everyone else is wondering why the heck you’re hauling it around with you.

Salt in the wound.  You’re bored.  But you don’t reach for Sudoku or some other sort of healthy mental floss.  Instead, you look for stuff that’s distressing or upsetting as a way to not feel bored.  You look up pictures of your ex-boyfriend’s new wife or check status updates from the friend you never talk with anymore, slumming for news you can ruminate about—now and later.  The trouble is, you end up manufacturing unhappy feelings that don’t end when your shift does.  Instead, those thoughts show up unexpectedly at other times, when your mind is quiet and calm, and it becomes harder and harder to show them the door.

Running interference.  Workaholics use work as a buffer.  The internet works in much the same way—it is always open for business.  Are you standing around uncomfortably, waiting for a late friend to meet you for coffee?  You can bury yourself in your phone as a way to pass the time or look busy.  Feeling bored or worried?  You can check your email and run interference with those feelings for a brief moment.  And isn’t it easier to send an email or even a text rather than having that tough conversation in person?  Sometimes this interference is harmless, small stuff.  But sometimes you may be satisfying your own need for comfort at the expense of other people and your relationships with them.

Sound familiar?

These are just a few examples of some of our bad online habits.  Can you think of others?

Next week, I’ll be talking more about how we can understand these tricky habits and how we can make some positive changes.