The Strange Relationship Between Social Media and Mental Health

I’m sure that by now everyone has seen thousands of posts on instagram discussing mental health and such related topics. Discussing it has become a staple within all accounts related to relatability, wellness, lifestyle content and more. Heck, the topic is discussed even beyond those niches. Some of these posts are very informative and helpful, while for others…Let’s just say they are the opposite. In this article, let’s explore the good, the bad and the ugly sides of the conversation surrounding mental health on social media.

The good

Let's start off positively and discuss the good side of having the topic be so openly talked about on social media! As I’ve already mentioned in my introduction, some posts can actually be really informative and offer a variety of good self care/mental health tips, such as openly communicating about your feelings to others, meditating, spending some time off the internet to clear your mind, etc. Spreading awareness on good coping habits can help decrease the amount of people that rely on harmful ones and can help make people feel better in general. Following, promoting the idea of getting professional help and various apps that can help such as Moodfit, Calm, BetterHelp and more help diminish the stigma around therapy and offer more affordable alternatives for the practice. Accounts that spread awareness on OCD, Depression, ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Eating disorders, Borderline personality disorder, Schizophrenia and more help a lot with teaching the younger generation about these various mental illnesses, and some strategies to overcome their symptoms and possibly get rid of them earlier on in their lives. Because some of these posts spread good ideas and advice, a lot of people benefit from them and it helps promote better mental health among users. For this reason, I would claim all posts like these to be good.

The bad

Next, in order for there to be light, there must be darkness, so let's discuss the bad type of posts. First, and probably the worst, are the diagnosis ones. I can not stress enough that you shouldn’t ever and I mean EVER diagnose yourself from a random TikTok you saw online. More often than not, these posts aren’t able to demonstrate the severity of the symptoms and can be easily compared to one of those “Which ice cream flavour are you” quizzes you may find on Buzzfeed. If you feel as though something is wrong, please look for a professional diagnosis, because sometimes doing it online can lead to you diagnosing yourself wrongly and doing more harm than good! Following, I objectively would say that the most annoying posts that are related to mental health are the ones that are written from people who are utterly clueless about the topic. Many of the people that post lifestyle or wellness content strongly believe that self care and mental health care are the same thing. Yes, drinking lots of water is certainly good for staying hydrated, but it unfortunately cannot cure your depression. It is important to distinguish the two topics in order to allow for better advice to be shared and practiced by others and stop the spread of misinformation surrounding the topic. Finally, this might just be a personal opinion of mine, but memes surrounding mental health just seem completely insensitive and unproductive to me, and I honestly just think they are weird. Even if these memes can objectively be labeled harmless, I think it is best to refrain from engaging or making any of them so as to not accidentally hurt someone else's feelings. Because all the types of posts I’ve mentioned above don’t really help and can even sometimes be harmful, I would categorize them as bad posts when referring to this subject.

The Ugly

Finally, let’s talk about the ugly side of letting just about anyone talk about mental health in the media. If you’ve been on any social media platforms or watched Netflix, then I am more than sure you must have witnessed examples of content where mental illnesses and such have been romanticized. Shows like “13 reasons why”, (you can all bash me for this) “Euphoria” and random aesthetic posts make the illnesses look magical, quirky and cool. It goes without saying that these shows and posts are tone-deaf and paint an unrealistic view of the subject, undervaluing the pain people affected by the illnesses feel. It is just overall disgusting and I believe the romanticization of mental illnesses in the media should be taken more seriously. Next up are those weird ads that use mental health terms and mental illnesses as keywords to attract users. Once while I was mindlessly scrolling on Instagram, I happened to stumble upon an ad for an app where you organize random objects by colours and such. The caption for it was “This app helped my OCD''. Afterwards, I ended up seeing another that said “They made OCD into a game🤩”. Saying that I was fuming would be an understatement. It goes without saying that these random fun organizing games or ones where you grow plants won’t cure your depression, anxiety or anything! Therefore there is no need to use these keywords as the games have nothing to do with those conditions! Mental illnesses are not fun, quirky or meant to be joked around with. Having advertisers do things like this again undermines the severity of these issues, insults people and is completely inappropriate in general. Last and definitely not least are the videos which people post where they fake mental illnesses or disorders… And I believe that statement speaks for itself. In conclusion, if you ever wonder just how crazy and insensitive it is possible for humanity to be towards mental health/illnesses, just take a peek at everything I previously wrote and I believe you would find yourself a pretty good answer.

In conclusion, it truly is a wonderful thing that it is becoming more and more common for mental health and related subjects to be talked about across all platforms. Let’s just remember that we should be responsible and make sure that we only upload posts that are productive and have a positive effect on our society, and nothing else!