Social Media and Mental

For years there has been buzz in the media about social media and whether or not it has a negative effect on the mental health of those who use it. In my personal social media use, I have noticed a huge increase in people sharing and almost normalizing complaints about depression and anxiety through memes and funny posts. Though it is a step towards shaking the stigma that surrounds mental disorders, I think that making a joke of life-altering and often detrimental health problems is inappropriate. Twitter has made it "cool" to tweet about how depressed you have been feeling, but there is no actual help offered up by the void we tweet our thoughts into. This romanticization of mental illness makes this serious health issue appear to be just another millennial fad that should not be taken seriously. This article, posted on studybreaks.com, discusses how depression jokes have become the new social media trend, leaving many users falsely convinced that they have a mental illness.

In addition to social media romanticizing mental illness, many believe that social media actually increases the effects and frequency of actual mental illness. Social media is filled with ways to access content that is triggering for those with depression, anxiety, anorexia and bulimia. The content is easy to search for and completely unregulated. If someone has been struggling with self-harm, they could easily run into a post on their Tumblr feed that is simply a picture of someone's wrist slashed open or even just scars on someone's thighs and be taken back to a dark place that they have worked so hard to get out of.  Though the content can be very triggering, posting about self-harm and eating disorders is an outlet for many who are struggling with these issues to connect with others who are in their same situation. Psychology Today discusses this issue in more detail in this article.

I think the issue surrounding mental health and how it is affected by social media is very complex. Though in recent years there has been an increased amount research on how the two interact, there are still conflicting views on whether discussing mental health illness so freely on the internet is helping break the stigma around mental health or whether it feeds onto the already growing issue. Let me know what you think in the comments!

If you are interested in learning more, here are a couple of additional articles on the topic:

http://archive.star.txstate.edu/node/1872.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/10/social-media-is-redefining-depression/280818/