By Joana Karoshi | Staff Writer
I think we, as humans, have a strong desire to find out what is wrong with us and to give explanations for our quirks. Social media is filled with personalized videos and discussions that share lives in a pursuit of validation and a desire to be understood and seen.
Content creators may share vulnerable moments in hopes of finding comments that say it’s “relatable” and that people will stand in solidarity. We have often heard this phrase across TikTok, Reels or responses on Reddit: “I thought I was alone in this”; “I feel so seen”; “This is so real.”
We want to make sense of ourselves and put a label on our shortcomings and problems. There is nothing worse than being confused and alone.
Social media, being the ever-changing medium, has fundamentally altered our lives and perceptions. The algorithm is always evolving and, in turn, evolving us: our identities and labels.
This is best described by philosopher Ian Hacking, who coined this phenomenon as dynamic nominalism, in which the categories that we use to describe people can change the people being described, who then can change the meaning of the category itself.
New labels create new people who identify with that label, and they inherit all the cultural characteristics that come with it; what Hacking terms a “looping effect.”
One of the focal points of our society that social media has touched is labeling in mental health. This has led to several positive outcomes: raised awareness, more accessible information and making it a less taboo topic. People have come to understand themselves and their psyche and have created safe spaces for many communities.
However, the very shape of the medium has created downsides. Short-form social media may leave little room for nuance and encourage simplification. A study of the 100 most popular TikTok videos about ADHD found that 52% contained misleading information, and the misinformation could give rise to health anxiety. Personal-experience videos were also the most popular.
Another study found that social media is more often used than scholarly sites when seeking mental health information. It concluded that among young adults seeking mental health care, social media information contributed to their self-diagnosis.
Therapy speak and mental health labels have crept into our daily lives. We do not feel normal anxiousness anymore; we all have social anxiety disorder; we do not feel sadness; we are perpetually depressed. Crushes become limerence, relationships that fail are labeled trauma bonding, and an organized personality trait becomes OCD.
This is not to say that people do not suffer from these ailments or that they do not exist. This is a pattern that people diagnose themselves through social media alone, and normal human experiences become pathologies, which dilutes the meaning of real conditions.
The New York Times reported in 2022 that there was a rise in young people self-diagnosing through social media. They reported that while this content can lead them to get help, self-diagnosing can be incorrect and lead to inadequate treatments.
The problem is not the overflowing knowledge on mental health or, in our case, the medium: social media. The problem is that much of our attitude toward it is inward: analyzing symptoms and being vigilant, but with no clear plan of action.
There is great harm in obsessing over the specifics of our mental states, as psychologist Daniel Marston found. “While self-awareness has value, excessive self-monitoring reliably amplifies anxiety in both humans and non-human animals,” Marston writes. He concludes that the trend creates “individuals who are psychologically informed yet deeply demoralized.”
The answer is not to ignore our problems or potentially brush off concerns for real diagnosis. Maybe the answer is much simpler: staying healthy and getting involved in a community.
College is a pivotal and turning point in people’s lives. For many students, it is a time marked by loneliness and depression. We are far away from our families, come from different places, may have a hard time being independent, do not quite fit in, and carry the burden of personal problems. For many of us, bettering our mental health should be a deliberate, active step.
Getting enough sleep, exercise, eating healthy, joining a club and getting involved in a community are non-negotiables when it comes to positively impacting our mental health.
Do not get sucked into the never-ending loop of naming everything that is wrong with you and why. Get proactive. And if you do believe that you are suffering from a condition, seek the help you need.
