Between my full-time job and blog, I spend a lot of time on social media. At the end of the day, I find myself looking for something calming to look at. Something that doesn’t make me obsess over followers or engagement metrics. Something that’s simply pretty. That’s why I rediscovered Pinterest.
Working on a mobile game about celebrities and fashion led me to spend more time on Pinterest. It lets me uncover the latest trends while seeing content that’s tailored to my style and I love that.
Whenever I open it, I’m impressed by the algorithm. By saving a few posts, it immediately learns my taste. It’s one of the smartest social platforms I use because the algorithm is so good at predicting what I’ll like. Plus, it knows exactly where I want to save it. If you don’t like what it shows you, then you can curate it to make it better. The more you use it, the better it gets.
It doesn’t matter how long Pinterest has been around – the magic never gets old. I love how it created a collage of girls in red pants for my cover photo and I didn’t have to lift a finger to make it. Since then, my feed has exploded with chic women in red pants and it’s so fun!
Sometimes I go on Pinterest because I’m bored and want to kill time. Then I end up remembering how it inspires you while passively scrolling. To maximize your experience on Pinterest, I recommend listening to a good playlist while you browse.
It’s relaxing just to look at style photos and I didn’t look for quotes about anxiety until I read articles about how many people seek guidance for mental health issues on the app. In fact, it’s such a common use case that Pinterest started implementing ways to be more helpful last summer and it’s rolling out new features in more countries this month. You can learn more about Pinterest’s emotional well-being activities here.
I realize that you could admire someone’s style who has an eating disorder and that would not support my theory that Pinterest is good for mental health. That can be hard to spot from a photo. I try to save photos from women who look healthy in outfits that I could realistically wear with my body type. Crop tops and bikinis? Not on my boards.
It’s hard to navigate our relationship with social media and it’s good to have a place to escape online. When I’m on Pinterest, I don’t pay attention to vanity metrics. I think about how each pin makes me feel and if I love something, I save it. If not, I move on. It’s that simple.
Pinterest became more enjoyable once I stopped caring about how many followers I have. Someday I could decide to focus on building my profile with original content, but until then, it’s refreshing to have a social media feed that makes me feel good and less competitive.