I remember the first time social media made me depressed.

I watched my friends give a glimpse into what their lives were like and how they documented them. Many of them were either working already or going to university and as for me in my involuntary gap year, I sat in bed and just got upset at how my life after school turned out.

I have nothing against people who perpetuate a certain image on social media. Whether it is out of self-soothing or to elevate their current lifestyle… it's not a secret that many of us often exaggerate certain parts of our lives to appear more interesting.

I think it's a part of the human experience.

I wasn't focusing on my growth in the right way when I scrolled and watched this content. I wanted to fit in better, I wanted to be perceived better and after a lot of thinking, I realized that it wasn’t worth it anymore. I cared too much.

It would be another six years before I reached a breaking point and just went offline.

I remember when I deleted my personal Instagram for the second time last year. I was going to lose access to a lot of content that I was I was used to, but it was also blocking me from things that would aid in my personal growth.

I got tired of being a lurker, a spectator in my own life. I have dealt with a lot of hardships - from ending up in a toxic place, and dealing with failed relationship attempts to dropping out of college… social media kind of became my escape from the real world.

Yet I had to come to terms with my escapism and choose a different way of existing on and offline.

Here's how I got rid of my social media envy for good

Setting boundaries on your social media has to be the best advice I've heard.

These boundaries can be as extreme as unfollowing everyone - even people that you know that you don't like, even if they haven't given any reason for you to dislike them. The pressure to go online and see what's going on will eventually go away, and you'll realise you didn't miss much.

Or the simple ones like keeping your explore page aligned with your interests and anything that encourages healthy growth. Yes, you can keep the meme pages.

The outage that happened this week really made me think about how I would have reacted to it. Don't get me wrong - I was very worried about how something like this could happen, but I didn't go crazy. I read a book, fell asleep, and woke up as if nothing happened.

Going on my social media is not as dreadful as it used to be. I understand how it works against me and I make sure that I stick to why I log in the first place.

*Have you ever had social media envy? How did you get rid of it?