#too bad the formers only available in japan and I think also Australia

[emily-mooon]

Is too much to ask Alvvays to release Underneath Us and the Antisocialites B-Side on a compilation album with their singles and hits

[englishassignmentplsgod]

We Have Progressed Past the Need for Titles

In the last decade, social media has risen to be a part of our everyday lives. For many, one of the first things they do upon waking up is check their social media apps. Social media has become so prevalent in today’s society that no one thinks twice about it. However, another thing no one thinks twice about when referring to social media is how it can impact someone’s mental health. Mental health has been a taboo topic for a while, it wasn’t until recently that more people have opened up about their internal struggles. Some do this by making a string of tweets about it, others open up by finding a community post that shows they aren’t the only ones struggling. But because social media is being used as an outlet for this conversation, we need to have the conversation that social media can be both harmful and helpful. And how one is affected is all unique to you.

There have been a few studies done in the attempt to find a connection between social media and its effects on the mind. Studies that show that lots of social media can make people reliant. This could have dangerous consequences. There was a study done on Australian men that questioned why these men have worse mental health compared to the women. The study, as reported in an article by Louise Ellis, a psychology specialist who works for the Australian Institute of Health Innovation in Macquarie Park, Australia and has written many research papers on topics such as this one, argues that because men are more dependent on getting all their information from social media and the internet in general, they are less likely to seek professional help in person. Ellis found that men are more dependent on getting help, when they chose to get it, from the internet. She found that they are more likely to blindly trust whatever source they find as an answer to their medical questions instead of getting help from a professional. This could have dangerous consequences, such as medical problems being left untreated. This is especially bad when the medical problem is mental. Ellis noted that a study found that in Australia, young people are “twice as likely to seek help from the internet than a professional” (Ellis). Not going to see a medical professional when problems arise is troubling. And ignoring the problems doesn’t mean they are going to go away. Mental health is a serious issue that doesn’t seem to be talked about much, most likely because mental problems are internal. I am aware that many don’t have resources available to them that allows them to seek medical help, but I personally could never seek help from the internet because I feel like there are too many people out there trying to scam others for money. But I am also aware that there are many people who try to help others from the internet. I know that many people grow up in toxic environments that give them the mindset that asking for help is bad, but it’s never bad to ask for help when you need it. Mental health has a negative stigma surrounding it that makes people scared to reach out for help, so they turn to the internet to give them guidance, and sometimes the internet leads them down the wrong path. But it’s studies like Ellis’s that raise awareness to a topic that many seem scared to talk about.

Louise Ellis isn’t the only person to make the connection between the rise of social media and the rise in mental health issues. Hajime Sueki, an associate professor at Wako University in the Department of Psychology and Education, Faculty of Human Sciences, wrote an article on the rise in concerning tweets on Twitter and suicides in Japan. His study reported that the more someone tweets about suicide the more likely it is they will commit suicide. Now, that seems fairly obvious, why would someone not experiencing suicidal thoughts tweet about something as serious as that? But that answer may be harder to understand. Sueki’s study looked at the long term history of its participants. They looked through years of Twitter history to get a better understanding of the people they were studying. And with this history, Sueki was able to conclude that those with a history of “tweeting “want to die” were 3.2 times more ,likely to experience suicidal ideation, 3.2 times more likely to have a suicide plan, and 2.1 times more likely to have attempted suicide” (Sueki) as compared to others without that type of history. There is a connection between tweeting about killing oneself and actually doing it. I believe that the people who are constantly tweeting about this are the people who aren’t actually mentally ill. I always felt like these people were doing it for clout. Now I know that many people aren’t like this, and many reach out in this way as a last resort, but there was always something about telling the internet that you were thinking of taking your own life that never seemed sincere to me. Sueki in his conclusion, makes sure to state that we as a society should aim to “develop new methods of providing appropriate resources” (Sueki) to the young people in need of them, those who are suffering internally.

Social media occurs online, and being online gives some people the ability to hide behind an internet persona they crafted. It allows some to pretend that they are living their best life, but others use it as a way to bully others. Cyberbullying is a huge issue when it comes to social media. It’s such a big issue that former First Lady Melania Trump said that that was the issue she as a first lady was going to focus on. She did nothing to stop cyberbullying, but I digress. Cyberbullying is a huge issue, so huge in fact that there are many movies and commercials that center around the topic of cyberbullying. Hugues Sampasa-Kanyinga, a professor at the University of Ottawa in the School of Epidemiology, Public Health, and Preventative Medicine, writes in his article about the dangerous effects cyberbullying can have in young people’s mental health. Social media acts as an easy way of getting in touch with friends, but it also acts as a way to anonymously attack people who don’t deserve that abuse. Suicide is unfortunately common among people aged 15 to 24. This is an incredibly sad statistic because suicide is for the most part preventable. There are warning signs that many are unfortunately blind to until it’s too late. And one of the reasons suicide is so common is because young adults in that age range are at the point in their lives where mental health issues start to arise and become prevalent. Add this to bullying from unseen people and it makes sense that there are young people taking their own lives. They don’t know how to cope with the internal struggles they are going through and they don’t know who they can trust, so they decide that that is enough, and end it. Sampasa-Kanyinga makes sure to point out that suicidal ideation and attempts are well known to be immediate precursors of suicide, [and that] it is important to identify possible factors that may lead to such behaviors in adolescents so that tailored interventions can be designed in order to break the possible chain of causality” (Sampasa-Kanyinga). Identifying these warning signs is so important in the fight for mental health awareness. Social media has the potential to be helpful, but right now all it is is harmful. It hurts too many people that that outweighs all the good social media does.

Social media is harmful in another way as well. Social media is harmful to those who suffer because it allows others to pose as mentally ill when they aren’t. Too many people have been caught pretending to suffer from disorders like depression and schizophrenia. This type of behavior is damaging to those who genuinely suffer with mental health issues, because it either plays into the stereotypes or it paints the mentally ill in a negative light. Kalpana Srivastava, a psychologist employed at the Armed Forces Medical Center in the Department of Psychiatry, wrote in an article that the media contributes to the stigma of mental health “through the exaggerated, inaccurate, and comical images, they use to portray persons with psychiatric disorders as well as providing incorrect information about mental illness” (Srivastava). Lots of people grow up not knowing much about mental illnesses. And because they grow up not knowing, they then get their first exposure through the media. This is bad because a lot of the time, the media isn’t trying to be accurate. They are going for the more dramatic aspects of mental illnesses. This inaccurate portrayal of mental illnesses can hurt those who suffer with the disorders being inaccurately represented. It can lead to people not believing them because they don’t act the way they see it in the media, and it can lead to self-diagnosing, which is bad because the only person diagnosing others with mental illnesses should be professionals. Misrepresentation surrounding mental health is dangerous and those who pretend to be mentally ill or those who aid in the spreading of misinformation are problems. However, these problems can be solved. They can be solved by people holding those who spread misinformation accountable for their actions. There can be mental health resources made available to those who need it that are monitored closely to insure that nothing harmful is being spread. Now, I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, social media has the potential to do good, but right now, all it is doing is harm.

Circling back to my first paragraph, I mention the fact that there has been a rise in social media usage. And I’m not wrong. I also have only talked about negative aspects of social media, and I will be continuing that trend. My last source on the issue of how social media is bad, is from a relatively underground newspaper called The Washington Post, or WashPo if you will. This paper is written by Tara Bahrampour, a journalist who has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, among other reputable sites. She, in her paper, acknowledges the effects social media has on young minds. There have been reports that show a jump in mental disorders in people ages 10-17. This was then compared to the rate diagnoses of mental disorders in adults, which there wasn’t a jump. Or if there was it wasn’t as extreme as the spike in teens. This spike can be “linked to increased time spent on social media and electronic communication “ (Bahrampour). This link is fairly obvious when you take into consideration the fact that most adults now didn’t grow up with social media. Social media isn’t going anywhere, from now on, kids are going to grow up on the internet. And it is our duty as people seeing the effects social media can have on young minds, to ensure that those kids have the resources they need to survive. That means that we need to develop sites for the mentally ill where they can get the help they need, that means we have to stop spreading misinformation about these disorders, that means we have to be better than what we currently are.

And we can be better, we have that potential. I have been very negative in my views on social media, so as someone who is on social media, I am now going to share some benefits social media has brought forth. Social media, as stated in the word social, acts as a way for many to stay in touch with friends and family. It makes making plans easier, it makes reaching out to others easier. Social media allows for us to be a bit lazy. And kids today have it easier, they have resources that many growing didn’t have because it simply didn’t exist. But now it does, so we’re reaping the benefits. But it is important to keep in mind that while social media has some benefits, it’s negatives outweigh its positives, in my opinion.

Social media for many acts as a means of communication. It allows for people to get in touch simply by DMing them, it keeps people up to date with your life as you share vacation pics on Instagram. And many people all over the world use social media. Candice Odgers, a professor at Duke University and a psychologist who specializes in youth development wrote, “today, more than 90% of US adolescents are online daily, and much of their time is spent connecting with friends and family whom they share their offline lives with” (Odgers). Because so many use social media as a way of connecting with others, it allows for some people to be more open with their personal lives. This could be the reason for an increase in mental illnesses. I say that because more people are admitting to have these disorders and are admitting that they need help. Before, the topic of mental health was always brushed aside, no one really understood how serious these issues are. But now that we are in an age where communication is easy and we’re being more open with others and with ourselves, we are allowing ourselves to get the help we need and deserve. The first step in getting help is admitting you have a problem. And today, admitting that is easier than ever.

John Naslund, an instructor at the Harvard Medical School is an expert in the field of mental health. His article touches on the many ways social media can aid in helping those suffering. He conducted a survey where he asked 240 Twitter users about their mental conditions. He used users who had their mental illness specified in their bio. He and a group of others concluded that it is easy to find others suffering from mental disorders and that it is also easy to reach out to those individuals. Being able to reach out, or just being able to know that someone else out there is going through something similar to you is nice. It makes you feel less alone. Naslund claims that “by demonstrating the success of reaching out to individuals who self‐identify as having a mental illness on social media, our study also highlights a potentially novel approach for engaging this at‐risk group” (Naslund). His study concludes that there is a community out there that is accepting of those who are mentally unwell. This study provides proof that there are people out there who will not turn you away in your time of need, that these people are accepting and understanding of your issues. They are willing to help you get the help you need and they’ll always be there for you so long as you return the favor. There is a sense of community that social media allows that proves that it can be beneficial in helping people who suffer from mental illnesses. And if we continue to work on these benefits, then social media has the potential to be better.

Alina Trifan, a postdoctoral student at the University in Aveiro who analyzes data on how social media relates to mental health issues, wrote a book where she talks about how social media can be used to detect mental health issues early on in a child’s life. She talks about how social media can be used to detect the early warning signs. I mentioned earlier that there are warning signs that many seem blind to until it’s too late, and if social media can detect those signs before anyone else, that can be used for our benefit. We can develop different resources to help detect these signs and evolve as our understanding of mental illnesses evolves. Trifan claims that “social media texts [have] the potential to provide methods for understanding a user’s mental health status and for the early detection of possible related diseases” (Trifan). We can take user histories and find trends, we can look into search histories to see if we find anything puzzling or of concern. If we develop this correctly, we could have a game changer. Social media will no longer be seen as something kids waste all their time on, it can be seen as a tool to getting kids the help they need that cannot be provided for them elsewhere. But right now, social media doesn’t provide ample resources to helping these kids out in meaningful ways.

Now this is a lot, I know, and I know that I was being negative early on then switched up and became all for social media. But I have a unique perspective. I am on social media, but I’m not active. I see what others are doing and I hear what they’re doing but I don’t actively participate. So the positive and negative aspects of social media don't really really affect me personally. But they affect others I know. And I want them to get the help they need, but I warn them away from looking through social media because the cons outweigh the pros right now. There are too many negative aspects to social media that I cannot see social media as something good. And until that changes, until social media starts being used in a better way, I’ll continue seeing it like that.

Social media has it’s benefits and it has its downsides. Currently the negative aspects outweigh the positives, but maybe as time goes on, there’s hope that that will change. Social media has the chance to be bigger than what it is, it has the chance to do real good. But it’s not doing that currently, and that’s a shame. But here’s to hoping.