We all have slumps that we go through, periods of life that are black holes that swallow us up and make us feel down. These are normal moments in which we have to have a little rain to enjoy the rainbow, and soon enough the sun will pop back out again and you will feel like your normal self.

In the meantime, taking your negativity to social networks can be soothing, perhaps even therapeutic. Having an outlet to say what is on your mind can be a sense of release and with friends and family able to send motivational thoughts and wishes this can be a form of cheering you up and helping you get through the rough patch.

Those moments are few and far between and I am not referring to them. I am however going to briefly touch on the negative posts that eat up newsfeeds, line after line, post after post. These types of social networking folks are what I call “The Complainers”, ones who use social media to whine about their first world problems and use their status updates as a punching bag.

To the complainers, I would like to remind you that there are people on the other end of your whine that can see your constant negativity as a trend. Clearly some have more issues than others, rough patches vary in length, but whining about them on social networks is not fixing your problem; in fact it is only making people not want to remain your friend since you have now been labeled as the “Debbie Downer” of their social club.

It is not that our empathy is low or that we cannot relate, we merely have our own issues and turn to social networks to try and ease our minds of them, not to constantly read more problems. Some of the negative status updates are eye roll worthy and only causes a reaction for people to see you continuously cry wolf.

Airing your dirty laundry is not what people want to read. People want to see, read, watch or hear anything that evokes a positive emotion; it’s just the way we are built. We don’t want to be bombarded with negativity on a regular basis.

If you are getting complaints about your status updates, or if people are unfollowing you, perhaps you need to re-evaluate how you are expressing yourself and read through your own posts and see if you are in fact the Debbie Downer of social networks.

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Erin Ryan is a writer for various blogs and a Social Media Promotional Director who has a keen understanding of the power of Social Media for business and fervently stays up-to-date with the Social Media Industry. Erin enjoys teaching and helping people and businesses on how to use and connect through Social Media. You can connect with Erin on Twitter.

Read more Social Media Tips on TheErinRyan Blog.