Mental Health and the Digital World
Today majority of young people are social media users, the Telegraph found that 96 percent of teenagers aged 13–18 are using social media networks. For young children in 2017 technology is the norm, I think its unfortunate to see children begging for a new phone rather than a new football. This must be changing how children develop and socialise; as they cope with challenges such as cyber bullying, self promotion and online communication. I believe its our responsibility as digital citizens to be aware of the impacts this can have on the future generation, especially as rates of depression and anxiety among teenagers has increased by 70 percent in the past 25 years. It would be naive to think that technology does not have a part to play in this worrying statistic. I will be discussing how technology has had a negative impact on mental health, whilst also considering how social media can be a positive for those suffering with mental illness.
Approval
We have become reliant on approval from others online, we need ‘Likes’ on our pictures and status’ to feel secure about ourselves. Therefore we portray the best version of ourselves, we only upload our best pictures and share our finest moments; as these will receive the most attention and ultimately make our lives look a lot better than they actually are. However a factor we don’t realise is that everyone on social media is doing this, everyone's’ life seems perfect and this is when people begin comparing themselves to others leading to anxiety and low confidence. This is extra worrying for younger children without the maturity to understand that not everything they see is an accurate representation. Laura Grant in repsonse to the topic of The individual agrees that for many young people, they now rely on sites such as Instagram and Facebook for their validation, creating an unhealthy addiction.
The Nosedive episode of Black Mirror deals poignantly with the issue of counting “likes” on social media, it gives an insight into a world in which people are given a rating from others based on every interaction. Fiona Campbell spoke about this episode in a response to mini mission 1, “ This is relevant to today’s society as it demonstrates how people are so socially conscious nowadays and feel judged by each action that they do.” this can cause so much stress for teenagers to be constantly judged on how their life is ‘rated’ compared to others. Fiona reinstates “our lives are restricted so much by it and it affects our happiness.” After watching this episode I did some research about ‘like’ addiction and was not surprised to see that a new study has displayed that receiving ‘likes’ on social media activates the same circuits in the teenage brain that are activated by eating chocolate or winning money. It is obvious that teenagers trying to sustain the amount of ‘likes’ they want and keeping up a perfect image would be a straining task. Therefore leading to some to crack under the pressure, resulting in unstable mental health; which is exactly what happens to Lacie in the Black Mirror episode. The topic of The individual also bought attention to myself that this process of rating one another is already happening in the real world as The Guardian article points out “ Asking humans to judge each other can be a surprisingly powerful thing. Take the Uber taxi app’s rating system— essentially a way of creating a reciprocal relationship between two strangers, where each has a reputation to lose.” Scary to think that someone could lose their job if a passenger gives them a bad review based on their few minute interaction with them in a car.
#SocialMediaIsNotReal
Steps in the right direction have been taken to display to teenagers that they do not have inferior lives compared to their online followers. In 2015 the hashtag #SocialMediaIsNotReal began to trend, trying to show teens what they were seeing on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter is not a true representation of real life. 19 year old Alexandra Harvey (Lexi) changed all her selfie captions to truthful accounts about how exactly that picture was taken. She captions a selfie as follows “Honest caption: I’ve never worn this swimsuit. It was 9 in the morning and I was freezing cold, knowing that as soon as I got a good shot (after many, many attempts), I would be straight back under the duvet. It is not a realistic representation of my life. #SociaMediaIsNotRealLife”. Movements such as this displays how social media can be used as a support platform among teenagers, as many joined together to admit what they had been sharing is not their true image.
Trolling and Cyber Bullying
The session of the ‘Individual’ spoke about the issue of trolling and online bullying this is a prominent issue as it can be done anonymously with little repercussions. A survey of 13–18 year olds found 24 percent reported that they were targeted on the internet because of their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability or transgender identity which can cause identity issues and low self esteem. Group one on the session Padlet bought attention to the issue of trolling, using an example of a young woman that was bullied to the extent of a 15 year old boy telling her she should ‘kill herself’ due to her weight. The repercussions of comments such as these could be horrific as 20% of children that are cyberbullied think about suicide, and 1 in 10 attempt it.Comments do not only hurt the victim but also other teenagers reading the nasty comments; 4 in 5 teenagers have seen online abuse taking place, If this is how teenagers are learning to communicate with each other it could become very dangerous. We are a generation that can get away with saying anything due to being able to hide behind a screen. A worrying concept for those on the other side of the screen. However technology is also holding the answers for these issues too. From personal experience victims often do not want to reach out to family and friends, many prefer to get help anonymously. Chat rooms and sites such as Kidscape and Childnet are essential tools on the internet for helping young people in communicating and working through their experiences which can result in saving lives.
Reflection
I was excited to take this course and intrigued what I would learn both about the digital world and also myself. I have always been a big user of social media and hoped the course would give me some insight on how social media is impacting me and what others opinions are about the excessive use of social media. The course has enabled me to see matters from many perspectives, yet all these from my own age range and same university.
I am an avid listener and I love hearing other peoples thoughts, therefore during the lectures I didn’t participate much however thoroughly enjoyed witnessing the discussions happening in the room about such interesting technology. In the future I would like to build up enough courage to actively speak during these debates too. I think this course has helped me on the way to being more confident with public speaking, especially after Digisoc2 in which I had to present my power point to a small group. Digisoc2 allowed me to research how technology has impacted tourism; a topic I am very interested in and hope to pursue a future in. I also really enjoyed reading responses to Digisoc1 in particular the response from Jennifer Capel how a charity such as Marie Curie have grasped social media to help them with promotion and fundraising. As a charity I have supported for years, hearing about how they are fitting into the digital world was intriguing to me.
The Netflix series Black Mirror was suggested in a lecture and I loved watching this, it changed my perspective on future technology and portrayed it in a scary light. Whilst visiting the Digilab I got to try the interactive gaming; I had to actually move my legs back and forth to run as a character in the game, I actually felt like I was in an episode of Black Mirror! Alongside topics such as the Internet of Things, these activities furthered my interest in these subjects and allowed a balanced viewpoint on pros and cons of new technology.
One thing I did struggle with is writing in a blog/casual style as it is something I have never done before! However I tried my best and took inspiration from others posts. Once i’d got the hang of it, I began to enjoy it and now I would like to do similar writing in the future.
The course made me reflect on my own usage of the internet and I decided I was too reliant on my mobile phone and made steps such as removing followers from Instagram and sorting through my friends on Facebook finally removing 400 people I no longer considered as friends. I assumed this would reduce the amount of time I spent on my phone as there would be less content to view. However I realised a lot of my time on my was spent communicating with family and friends at home or different universities and then I realised what a great tool it really is. I make more time with my friends and now regularly leave my mobile phone at home when meeting with them. I believe time spent with friends shouldn’t consist of staring at Facebook feeds. Although I do rely on my phone a lot, I like to think I have reduced my usage! Overall I've loved the course and would thoroughly recommend it to my friends.
