Social media is the enemy of encouragement, right? I mean, that’s exactly what everyone keeps saying. It really has been a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. Much as they suggest the video games are bad for you. And when that happens, the warning bells are expected to start ringing.

For, as Mark Twain said, “When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” He’s right. Computer games can be pretty good for you, for one thing. So, maybe social media can be used as a source of motivation?

You might just as well remove the question mark because it can. Here’s how.

You can connect with your niche

In the days before social media, if you had a particular interest that was a little off the beaten track – maybe quilting by moonlight or just listening to every artist’s third album – then it was going to be hard for you to find people in your community that shared that passion. That has changed the social media. It’s quick to reach out and find people who share our views and share our ideas with them.

And in this way, it offers the extraordinary and kooky among us (including me) an opportunity to find people like us who share our interests and make us feel comfortable despite our need for a lunar quilt. Sometimes what we’re looking for is acceptance. Without it, we feel lost – and it’s incredibly dangerous for us. We feel the love with it – and that’s incredibly motivating.

You can connect with your Network when you need to

Your mother was right about that. If you hang out with a bad crowd, you’re going to end up being bad. This is exactly how it is. But if you hang around a good crowd, they can be incredibly helpful in helping you, keeping you going and – yes, there’s that term – encouraging you.

It’s not the fault of your social media, what a crowd you’ve got. That’s something you’ve got to decide. And we all know we’ve got to stop the bad guys. So, make sure you throw away those people on your social Network who are negative, annoy you, tempt you to do something you’re not supposed to do, and embrace those who give you constructive advice and bring in handy resources.

Because if you can make sure that your social media network is full of positive people, it can be highly helpful. It might also be better than getting people around you physically, practically. Since your social media network doesn’t go out of town, visit other countries, or go fishing. It’s right there everywhere you go.

You will find information that you wouldn’t have had otherwise

Don’t you enjoy looking for articles, reading every newspaper, or scanning all health sites for the latest findings? You don’t need to do that if you have the right social media. Being linked to the right groups is like having a thousand extra eyes looking for details about you. And the thing is, some of them are bound to like doing the search (and getting the kudos they’re doing to find something meaningful).

In this way, social media will keep you in the loop and be well informed of the latest findings in whatever area you work in. And getting your curiosity continually stimulated and tweaked by your social Network is an immensely motivating thing.

They can support you when times are dark

You got your ups, and you got your downs. This is life. The thing is, our downs are much less likely to be severe when we have people around us who can support us, encourage us, and guide us. And sometimes, that’s just what we need when we only hit one of the speed bumps in life – people who are there for us and ready to support us.

In this way, social media doesn’t just motivate us and keep us moving; it also saves us from ending up demotivated and depressed. And sometimes it’s just as important. It is, in truth, sometimes even more so.

They are full of inspirational stories

One of the best ways that social media can help us out is by giving us stories that get under the skin and make us appreciate our life, our passion, and our friends. There is no better tool that I can think of to spread inspiring quotes, ideas, stories, and articles than social media.

Are you feeling a little bit down? All you need to do is go on social media for an hour and read stories about other people and their lives. In no time can you find a person who can emulate you, who has it worse than you, or awakens your concern. And with that in your mind and heart, you can find the energy to keep going.

You can get answers to your questions

Sometimes when you’re working on a project, you need to find out something, and after a few tries at Google, you can’t get the bots out there to understand what you’re looking for. This can be incredibly stressful, as you will have to find a way through this impasse, which may cause you to redo a whole chunk of what you’re working on. Or you need to find some other way to get the details.

Social media will assist with the latter. Human intelligence also outstrips that of bots, so if you ask your question, people will always give you the answers you need, and away from the impasse.

People can often volunteer details that you didn’t even know was out there, and you can turn what you’ve been doing well into something better, only by making a few tweaks. It wasn’t possible before social media, and it can be immensely motivating.

You can post your goals

Making your goals public is a perfect way to make it more likely that you will live up to them, as you are also using not just your desire to meet your goals, but also your shame if you do not succeed as a motivation to get them done.

And because we all have negative feelings, why don’t we use them to drive us to do something positive?

So make your social media goals public and share them with your friends. In your private life, you may be motivated to get going to work. Heck, you may even end up encouraging other people to follow their own goals and end up thanking you for that. And there’s probably no better way to get motivated than to know like you’re an inspiration to other people.

You can use it to recharge

And finally, it could help you keep going by distracting you. What did I say? Yeah, I just said that distractions are good for motivation. Don’t listen to people who tell you otherwise. The reason for this is simple. We’re not machines. We all need to encourage our brains to drift off the topic occasionally so that our batteries can be recharged.

In this way, research has shown that our mental stamina lasts a long time. And that means that we’ll have more to do, we’ll still have the resources left to stay involved in our private life, and we’re not at constant risk of burnout.

Nobody can stay on goal for 24 hours a day, despite what they can tell you. Often you need to drift off the topic to be able to focus on the subject for longer. You can only get through the day in that way.

So ignore the majority and hissing on social media, and how it’s dumbing down society. Social media is a tool, and it can be used for good and bad, just like every other tool. It’s just a matter of how you’re using it. You can use it to keep yourself from doing what you’re supposed to do, or you can use it to motivate yourself to do even more.

The choice is yours.

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