Published on 12, July, 2020
I have Aspergers, and have been talking to someone I like as a friend (and also secretly fancy!) on Instagram, and it's been going well. I also followed them on TikTok and liked some of their posts, but they haven't followed me back. I have been really nervous about this, and am scared that our relationship is fake or less somehow because of this. I know that they haven't posted again since I followed them, but then I remembered whenever someone follows me on TikTok I'm notified on the home-screen of my phone, so I got scared and thought "What if they have seen my follow and likes, why haven't they followed me back?". I've been trying to separate the anxiety from myself (like labelling it), as I know it is irrational. Do you guys go through similar anxieties, and how do you deal with it?
Social media is too unpredictable and dangerous, so it’s not safe to rely on it in terms of your emotional health. In other words, your emotional state should not depend on how many likes/followers you have there because it doesn’t define you as a person. It has no connection to your personality and to the life you live. My advice is to differentiate between the real and virtual worlds and choose the first one over the second. Social media, for me, is just a nice way to communicate with people and sell my products. It’s easy to get more attention on newer platforms like TikTok and get many followers there with the help of [link removed by Mod]. I use it, but I never forget that it’s not real.