Our social media feeds can easily drag us down. They often show fights, angry posts, or videos that make us feel bad about ourselves.
But here’s the good news: We can change what we see by choosing better content. A new study shows that watching just three to five minutes of inspiring videos every day can actually make us feel more positive.
Researchers searched the internet for feel-good videos, the kind that get a lot of “wow” reactions or go viral. They focused on stories of people beating the odds, like Sean Swarner, a cancer survivor with only one working lung who climbed Mount Everest.
In the study, people watched Swarner’s story and other similar videos. After watching, many felt more hopeful. “We found that people felt more hopeful after watching the inspiring videos,” said study author Robin Nabi from UC Santa Barbara. “And that hope led to less stress over the next ten days.”
About a thousand adults from across the US, aged 18 to 86, took part. One group watched inspiring videos daily for five days. Another group watched comedy clips. A third practiced short meditation sessions. The last group didn’t watch or do anything.
In the end, comedy didn’t make much difference. But both inspiring videos and meditation boosted hope, and people in these groups felt less stress afterward. Nabi said the results were surprising because the effect of watching inspiring videos was almost the same as meditation.
The changes weren’t huge, after all, a few videos can’t magically fix everything, but even small improvements matter. “These small effects can add up over time,” Nabi said. “Feeling hopeful helps us handle the stress in our lives. The real question is what happens if we make this a habit?”
Positive content creates positive feelings
Judith Moskowitz, a researcher from Northwestern University, said the findings make perfect sense. “Science is proving what we already know: When we watch positive content, we feel more positive and hopeful,” she said.
In this study, people were sent the videos and agreed to watch them, but in real life, our feeds are full of whatever the algorithms push at us. Moskowitz says the real challenge is training yourself to focus on uplifting content in your everyday scrolling.
Media expert Allison Eden from Michigan State University adds that social media often pulls us toward negative or dramatic posts because those get more attention. “Media can be a powerful tool for managing your mood,” she said. “But you have to choose the positive.”
Interestingly, her research shows that when people are in bad moods, they often look for sad or scary content, and that makes them feel worse. Most of us don’t even realize how much what we watch affects how we feel.
To “reprogram” your social media feed and fill it with more feel-good posts, here are three simple tricks:
1. Fill your feed with positivity
Start your day by searching for happy or inspiring content. Follow hashtags that make you smile, whether it’s puppies, nature, sports moments, or hobbies like cooking, music, or crafts.
2. Keep a media journal
Each time you watch something, notice how it makes you feel. Write it down. After a few weeks, you’ll start to see patterns, what lifts your mood and what drains it.
3. Clean up your feed
If your feed is full of stressful or negative stuff, hit reset. You can unfollow, block, or even start a new account. Eden herself does this from time to time, a “digital cleanse.” You can also take a short break, like one day a week without social media, to refresh your mind.
Even small choices, like watching one uplifting video a day, can make a real difference. Your mood and stress levels depend more on what you feed your mind than you might think.