What not to do on social media when you're sleep deprived

By Andrea Michelle

Whether you’re up at night with your baby, travelling and your body clock is out of whack, or you just can’t sleep, it’s often that we’ll reach for social media to pass some time, and to feel like we’re not the only ones staring at the moon.

But sleep deprivation can make us commit social media faux pas that can make us look like social geeks in the cold hard light of day.

Here’s 8 things to avoid when getting online and the mind is fuzzy from lack of sleep:

Liking, and commenting on someone’s photo on Facebook that you don’t know.

It’s the equivalent of jumping into a conversation with strangers.

Scrolling through someone’s Instagram feed and ‘liking’ a photo from 47 weeks ago.

Creeper anyone?

Uploading a selfie evidencing how sleep deprived you are with the caption “I’m so tiiiiiiiired!”

Yeah I’m guilty of this one, and it’s pretty lame. Sure you might have a bunch of people giving you kind supportive words, but it’s really just a whinge which is boring. We’re all tired. We’re all exhausted. And no-one really wants to see that ‘tired face’.

Try to avoid the tired face selfie. And the duck face selfie.

Loading up photos with your friends but choosing the one where you look best.

There are codes of friendship that should never be crossed, and this is one. A cool solution is the GroupShot app, where you can download a bunch of shots from your photo library and seamlessly cut and paste the best head shots from a similar bunch of pics, resulting in one shot where you all look good.

Accidentally re-tweeting something with overt sexual overtones.

Unless you are JT and trying to bring sexy back, you’ll just look pervy.

Creating a new board on your Pinterest page as a tribute to your ‘special interest’ – especially if that includes unicorns.

‘Special interests’ are more often best kept private, because they are soooo “special”.

Stalking your ex and/or his new girlfriend and accidentally pressing Add Friend.

Because, “duh”.

Sending a private message but its accidentally made public. Especially if it involves a nudity.

My friend confided that she’d once taken a pretty racy photo for her husband while overseas travelling for work, and in a haze of jet-lag accidentally uploaded it on her Facebook page instead of via Messenger. Thing is, she didn’t need to tell me this, because I saw it. And sadly, can’t un-see.

Tweeting your fan-girl crush.

I know it’ll be hard to believe, but neither Ryan, George, Johnny, Zac, nor any of the members of One Direction really want to hear from you. And no, they will not respond. Ever.