Social media for art is a wonderful tool to get exposure and share your art. But it can also backfire if you’re not prepared to expect certain outcomes that may not meet your expectations. It’s incredibly easy to fall into a mental trap of disappointment, outside approval of things that you don’t have control over, and even loss of self-esteem at times. Ultimately, using social media can be a dangerous hazard to your mental stability. Here is a list of 10 lasting negative effects on your mental health when using social media for art.

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10 Dangerous, Lasting Mental Health Effects of Using Social Media for Art

1. Low Self-Esteem

Low self-esteem comes from emotions such as feeling that you’re work and efforts aren’t noticed or that you’re ‘not good enough’ (whether it has to do with your skill or having a small following on social media).

This is a sly mental hazard that can pass under your radar when using social media for art because low self-esteem is very dependent on how you use it to gain a following . . . And that’s through other accounts’ engagement with your content.

For example, if your content gets noticed more, you’re more likely to feel happy and continue using social media. But if your content performs poorly, you’re more likely to feel bad about yourself and start to doubt your skills and posted work. Be sure to look out for this, if it comes up!

Low self-esteem from using social media for art comes from having either too high of expectations from outside sources that you can’t control (like how many ‘likes’ or ‘saves’ on your content) or too low of expectations in yourself, where you start to doubt yourself and what unique creations you bring to the table.

The key here is to find a balance where you have enough confidence in your content and work but low expectations from outside sources that don’t come from you. So, know that using social media for art can be extremely beneficial for your goals but it isn’t 100% necessary for you in reaching them.

2. A Persistence of Approval from Outside Sources

In order to be successful on social media, we need engagement and even sometimes online social approval from other accounts and people.

Basically, when we use social media for art we must rely on outside sources to make it big on sites like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

The problem here, is that we’re no longer relying on ourselves and thus our self-confidence, but leaving it up to the masses and what they like.

Therefore, a balance between personal satisfaction and wanting to satisfy others then becomes a struggle where the scales tip to the latter. When this happens and we start to cater and sacrifice bits of who we are to people we’ve never even met, we start to value their opinions and actions more than our own. And in turn, we may even lose ourselves and uniqueness in the process, which can be mentally damaging and challenging to get back later on.

A fix for this mental effect is to believe and have confidence in your individuality, uniqueness, and yourself. You can try learning to build yourself up through gratefulness, rewarding yourself on accomplishments (either big or small, doesn’t matter), or saying positive affirmations to yourself and manifesting positivity with optimism. Here are a few more techniques and mindsets that will help you overcome this negative feeling of having art anxiety and how to be confident with your art.

3. Disappointment in Lack of Online Engagement

Anytime we use social media for art, our account growth is primarily dependent on engagement from other accounts through sources likes ‘follows’, ‘likes’, ‘comments’, and re-shares.

For some sites, when our content performs badly, we get ‘punished’ by the site where our content reaches less people and therefore less engagement and is less seen. Just because your content isn’t getting engagement doesn’t mean it’s bad. It mostly has to do with the site’s algorithms and what’s currently trending which is not an accurate depiction of valuable content.

When you use social media for art, disappointment from a lack of engagement with your content can creep up if you’re not careful of your expectations from using social media.

In this case, it’s vital that you set healthy boundaries and expectations when deciding to post on social media to help prevent feelings of incompetence, disappointment, and low self-esteem. Boundaries can include how much time you spend on a platform, how much effort you want to put into a post, or how much you’re willing to engage with other accounts. Expectations can be how you use social media for art, in what specific ways you’d want to use it, and thinking ahead to how it will affect you if your social account doesn’t gain popularity.

Using the above tips will help you prevent these negative effects of social media on your mental health including the one that’s next – a real blow to how you perceive yourself in all aspects of your life.

4. Less Confidence in Yourself

Disappointment in how well or fast our accounts grow when we use social media for art can take a huge toll on our confidence.

Since social accounts rely heavily on what other people think, there is often a lack of trust in ourselves that becomes more prominent when we feel we’re not seen.

This lends itself to low self-esteem and self confidence, often in the form of doubt and feeling like we’re not good enough or that our content really sucks. Which in most cases, is not true!

Basically, our perceptions of ourselves become warped and often untrue. Over time, this constant way of negative thinking and having less confidence ends up spilling into our personal lives if not also professional.

Less confidence prevents us from reaching our goals and experiencing new things. It stunts our ability to change and grow from our experiences, keeping us mentally stagnant and even afraid of other possibilities. You don’t want to be stuck in an endless negative loop, do you? Hint: it’s not doing anyone any favors here.

When you use social media for art, try making a list of negative emotional triggers when using each platform. Like what makes you feel disappointed or sad. This’ll help you identify what is draining your self-confidence. From there, you can write down ways that’ll prevent you from falling into these negative mental traps while keeping you focused and consistent with your social media accounts. But only if it’s something you’re into!

For a more in-depth look and further solutions, check out this helpful article on how to stop and prevent anxiety and depression as a social media artist.

5. Using Social Media for Art Produces High Anxiety and Stress

A lot of us including myself have used social media for art but have gone about it the wrong way.

A common thing I keep hearing, is to ‘post every day’ if you want to be successful on social media.

Now, this may be possible for some but for a lot of artists including myself, I find this incredibly difficult and even impossible to do.

As a concept artist, it’s not easy to create something new every single day, especially when there’s painstaking detail and thinking involved in each design. I felt a constant pressure to always post a new artwork to Instagram. What posting every day did to me, was make me worry about all the days I didn’t post versus focusing on the day at hand. I failed miserably at posting. Not only did posting on social media for art exposure limit my perception of what I could do, I also felt very trapped with a constant cloud of anxiety and stress looming over me because I wasn’t able to post a new work every day. It was an unrealistic standard for me that I couldn’t reach. It built up so much stress and anxiety that I ultimately left the platform in 2019 to de-stress and collect myself. And I’ve been feeling fantastic ever since!

If you ever feel you need a break from social media, absolutely take it! Don’t wait. Your mental and physical health are always worth more than a couple pictures or online personas. You deserve it and owe it to yourself 🙂

Whenever you’re using social media for art take your time to understand and know your limits of what you personally can or can’t do on a platform. Do some research on how to grow a following in the easiest and most achievable way for you. This will help you be consistent with your content but helps you avoid stress and anxiety from building up into your personal life. You can also grab my free art therapy activity printables for relieving anxiety and stress when you just want a mental breather on-demand.

6. Burnout

Ever feel you work so much on something only to be mentally or physically exhausted and even unmotivated at times?

Well, that’s burnout.

Using social media for art can be wonderful in getting exposure but only if you’re consistent and have quality content. These two points are necessary in becoming successful on social platforms.

But guess what? They’re also the top two things that have a winning chance of unapologetically depleting your time, energy, and motivation to the point where it’s dangerous for your well-being.

If not taken care of, burnout has the potential to ruin our lives over time in ways we’d never expect. It’s because it attacks both our physicality and mentality. A frightening combination. But I don’t want to scare you.

With a few simple techniques and a bit of organization, burnout when using social media for art can be easily prevented. Here are a few tips on how to prevent and recover from creative burnout fast.

7. Low Happiness

We’ve discussed earlier that when we use social media for art we can lose our self confidence and self-esteem. When that happens, guess what else we lose in the process?

If you guessed happiness, you’re right.

When confidence in ourselves gets foggy we also stray away from the positive. When we put more energy and time into the negative it only makes those emotions stronger and no longer prioritizes our feel-good moments and qualities. A shift towards a bleak outcome tends to take over and engulf us at times.

A quick fix to remedy low happiness is to distance yourself from those negative feelings. Notice your negative thoughts and ask yourself why you’re feeling that emotion. You don’t need a solution, just a simple reason and some mental distancing. If this doesn’t make sense to you, you can also try these easy art inspiration drawing ideas to instantly put you in a better mood!

8. Procrastination – Fear of Failure When Using Social Media for Art

When we think of procrastination, we think of putting things off. While this is true, the main reason behind procrastination is not laziness but fear of failure.

• To learn more about procrastination, here’s an accurate and informative video by The School of Life about how procrastination is a result of avoiding uncomfortable situations with tips on how to overcome it.

Fear of failure can arise from using social media for art when we’re afraid of making content that may be terrible or unpopular. While this may be true, it’s not certain.

While we do experience a fear of failing, it doesn’t mean that emotion is true. We don’t know the outcome for sure because we haven’t experienced it yet.

But when we do have that fear, we tend to avoid situations that make us uncomfortable, thus putting off our work and tasks for another time.

A result of procrastination when using social media for art is when we consistently post high quality content but are afraid the next one’ll suck. (I feel this way every time I post!) So, we end up delaying our post or not even posting at all! I’m definitely guilty of the latter. Or maybe there’s a fear of less engagement or a possible unfollowing from your next post. Have you ever felt this way when using social media for art?

When procrastination ends up becoming a constant habit, it can be quite difficult to remedy. It can end up pouring into our daily tasks and even into our work causing us to put off important duties or resulting in unfinished (work) projects.

An easy solution to get you started, is to think about all the rewards you’ll get from completing a task. How much good will it do for you vs. not completing a task? When you shift your mindset from fear, to comfort and positivity, you’re more likely to start a task and even finish it because you have a clear and positive outcome. Try thinking this way the next time there’s a duty you’re trying to avoid.

9. It’s Easy to Lose Track of Your Uniqueness & Style

An important thing to consider when using social media for art is your voice. What do you bring that makes you unique, different, and is a reflection of your personal style? These are all key points in having social media success.

But the trap here is it’s insanely easy to fall into someone else’s voice while losing your own. Social media requires us to spend time on their platform to be successful, allowing constant outside influences to be a part of that growth. What this can do, is water down our own uniqueness and style. Even influencing our art and voice outside of social media, something that makes us unique as individuals.

Keeping your personality in your art and work process is what makes people and companies enjoy you, your creativity, and want to hire you! Don’t forget that 😉

To avoid losing your creative voice when using social media for art, have a clear + specific plan of what you want to show online. Make notes of your goals and how to achieve them w/ your creative voice. Set boundaries for how much you want to stray away from that voice. For example, to boost my account growth, I’ll make a couple trending videos. But not where that’s a majority of my content.

10. You Start Comparing Yourself to Other Artists

For me, this was the biggest issue I overcame from using social media for art.

When you start comparing yourself to other artists online, doubt and fear of not being good enough may creep into your mind. These and other thoughts then have an enormous effect on your confidence, ability to complete tasks, and self-esteem, numbing your focus, determination, and happiness. A mental battle then ensues where you’re competing and trying to keep up with other artists. Thoughts like “I wish I was better”, “They have it so good”, “I want to do ___ instead of ___”, or “I’ll never be good enough” are all self-defeating and negatively affect other aspects of your life. Relationships, work, and your hobbies are all extremely vulnerable to this. So if you start comparing yourself to other artists, make a note of how it happened and try giving yourself positive affirmations instead.

A great fix is to take some time off from social media. It can be days, weeks, months, or even years. Whatever works for you. It’s a social media detox. If you must use social media for art, promotion, etc., then I’d highly suggest posting your own content without browsing the ‘explore’ sections or your feed. This allows you to focus on your content w/out being influenced or comparing yourself to others. You can even follow accounts where you like their content but don’t feel intimidated by them. This has helped me stay focused and consistent with my content.

That was the last one!

How You Can Successfully Navigate Being an Artist Online

Check out some of these helpful resources for more awesome artist tips, tutorials, and more:

• Why Being a Social Media Artist is a Tough Competition to Win | Post
• 7 Ways to Stop Anxiety & Depression As a Social Media Artist When You’re Online | Post
• 10 Brutal Truths Before You Start Drawing | Post
• Easy Art Journal Therapy for Beginners | Post
• Free Printable Stress Relief Cheat Sheet for Artists | Freebie
• Free Printable Copyright Cheat Sheet When Posting Your Art Online| Freebie
• NFT Art Theft: Why You Need to Protect Your Online Art Right Now  | Post
• How to Beat & Prevent Creative Burnout for Artists | Post
• How to Overcome Art Anxiety Fast & Be Confident with Your Artwork| Post
• How to Identify Online Art Bashing vs. Art Critique When Posting Your Art  | Post

Using social media for art is a wonderful tool to have more eyes on your work, just make sure you find a good balance between that and your personal life.

Which negative mental effect resonates with you the most or how has using social media effected you? Leave your thoughts in the comments below! See you in the next post.