When you hear the words social media and mental health, it’s not two things that usually go hand in hand. With the age of TikTok, it makes it so easy to access such a vast range of content at our fingertips. Getting sucked into those dark corners of the internet during a 3am doom-scrolling session can hardly be good for our mental health. There is little point to telling people to just stay away from social media as it consumes our everyday life, but there are ways to navigate it that allow you to reap its benefits.
Whilst it could be said that the past few years have not been the best in terms of talking about mental health, the attitude towards sharing your struggles and speaking up about it has drastically improved. Stimulating the need for change and acceptance, the past couple years have shown a growth of communities and influencers on social media with a positive attitude toward improving health. Their growth not only shows the need for this kind of content but the increased public engagement represents the move away from toxic media to a new kind of content. Some great accounts to follow are @mentalhealthceo @realdepressionproject, and @bethdrawsthings.
The ‘post your pill’ trend became a huge influence in dismantling the stigma around talking about mental health. Emerging in 2021, Dr Alex George encouraged his followers to post a picture of the medication they take for mental health reasons. With the aim of normalising reaching out for help in the same way we would for any other physical condition, the trend reached over ten thousand posts using the phrase #postyourpill on Instagram. This transparent and honest trend sets a precedent for other influencers to follow.
The year 2020 saw the influx of fitness influencers, Ab workouts (Chloe Ting’s most popular video raking in nearly 500 million views) and ‘what I eat in a day’ TikTok’s. Only for NHS England to state that ‘more young people than ever before are receiving treatment for eating disorders’. The internet can be a dangerous place when it comes to influencing behaviours, especially as young people now have such easy access to it. But new emerging ideas have shown a shift towards the body positive era of social media. Some Instagram influencers to follow, @meganjaynecrabbe and @millyg_fit, create a positive feed normalising the realities of what bodies look like. Alongside this, new trends such as photo dumps and the BeReal craze allows an exposure of everyday, unfiltered, life. No longer are photos retouched and heavily altered. We are allowing our true self to be revealed online, and in turn a feeling of accepting one another as we are, is on the rise.
Photo Credit: Tiktok App by Focal Foto is licensed under CC BY 2.0.