I’m not a huge user of Facebook or social media in general but recently I happened to be part of a thread on Facebook where the topic being discussed became very heated, a bit personalized and aggressive.

The conversation started out quite innocently and cleanly but some of the contributors disagreed with each other and the conversation descended into personal attacks and name-calling. I was part of the conversation and to be honest, the whole experience just left me really frustrated, angry, annoyed and stressed as a result.

I was surprised by the strong feeling of stress as a result of the sheer frustration of not really being able to do anything more than type a reply on Facebook. It seemed to me to be a really poor medium upon which to have a debate on something as complex as a multi-ethnic society and potential crime rates in local areas.

While everyone was no doubt well intentioned, printed words fail to give off compassion or empathy a lot of the time and people interpret words in their own way. Even their own mood has an impact on how they read other peoples comments.

I know this happens every single day on Twitter and Facebook but my experience of it, which was probably mild enough in terms of content, left a bad taste in my mouth. I think there is enough stress in our day to day lives without adding to it with virtual stress via social media platforms.

Have you ever experienced any stressful situations on social media? Leave a comment below.

Yours in health and happiness,

JP