by Anna Breslaw

You might self-consciously set your profile as “In a Relationship” with your best female friend to make a joke about how single you are, but it’s really, really not as big a deal as you think it is. 

1. Checking Facebook and Twitter right up to the minute you go to sleep isn’t really great for your sleep. 

It’s been linked to sleep issues and subsequent bad grades in teenagers who have FOMO — and let’s face it, your job is pretty much like high school with nice dress pants. You don’t need to sabotage your job just to see on late-night Facebook that Mark Davis from high school added Sum-41 to his favorite bands and then deleted it just as quickly. 

2. You can save yourself giant emotional shitstorms by unfriending your exes. 

Whether or not you think it’s melodramatic, or that he’ll notice and it’ll look like you care too much. Because you never know what can pop up on his feed that will horrify or sadden you. 

3. Try not to be jealous of some girl’s Instagram life. 

And remember that everyone’s social media page is the best, smartest, prettiest, most curated version of themselves.

4. You have to comment “Aww” on photos of babies even if they’re hideous. 

Or just say nothing. 

5. Don’t sweat Facebook relationship statuses. 

You might self-consciously set your profile as “In a Relationship” with your best female friend to make a joke about how single you are, but it’s really, really not as big a deal as you think it is. 

6. You pretty much kind of don’t need a Facebook. 

Not for professional reasons, anyway, unless your profession is seeing the most popular kids at your high school get fat. 

7. Getting into the really deep cuts of Google-stalking someone before you go out with them is not only unhelpful but will make you feel creepy once you’re on the date. 

Just knowing that you made it all the way back to his acoustic cover of “Umbrella” on YouTube circa 2007. 

8. Don’t write passive-aggressive, indirect tweets or Facebook status updates about friends/boyfriends/roommates who annoy you. 

They (and the whole world) will see them, and it will make your drama worse, not better. 

9. Don’t post nude photos or pictures where you’re obviously binge drinking. 

What’s the point? Employers and colleges are the only ones interested in that crazy party. Just email/text the hilarious pics to your friends. 

10. If you really want someone to come to an event, send an email — less than half of all humans check Facebook invites. 

I mean, that’s not a proven statistic, but almost nobody I know still looks at their Facebook events calendar regularly. Text or email instead.

11. A double filter can (almost) fix a photo of your bad side. 

A trick from social media whiz and Cosmopolitan.com #Queen Elisa Benson: Filter once, save the picture, and filter again. 

12. Most of your food photos probably don’t look as good as they taste. 

We can’t all be top-notch food bloggers, even if it seems like we can be. Just look at Martha Stewart. 

13. It doesn’t really matter who friends/follows whom first. 

This isn’t high school. Stop being so neurotic about coming off uncool that you miss an opportunity to have a new IRL friend! She’s probably stalling because she’s thinking the same thing. 

14. If you accidentally like something on your ex-boyfriend’s Facebook page during drunken, late-night stalking, it’s fine! 

This will not affect your life in any real way. Just pretend it never happened. 

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.