Talking about mental health on the internet is fucking weird.
Something has always stopped me from talking too candidly about my anxiety online so I’ve never before posted for Mental Health Awareness Month, despite the fact that every day, I make everyone around me very aware of my mental health.
This year, I decided to change that— albeit on the last day of May. You can’t always have your awareness and your mental stability, too.
Today, we’re going to talk about the relationship between mental health and social media. We’ve been skirting around having that conversation for a while (and by that, I do mean the conversation in which I challenge Mark Zuckerburg to a duel)1 but in truth, I could not have done this before without the queen of social media by my side: my former coworker, current enemy, and future colleague of life, Jane Parven.
Jane is a girl slash Adult Woman Jr. who studies Media and American Studies at Emory University, and has both had many a discussion and written many a paper surrounding Social Media and Mental Health.2 Jane and I looked at Gen Z’s collective mental health, how social media has essentially shat on it, and who she thinks should get the Donald Trump Gold Star Cancellation Treatment next (hint: it’s obviously me).
🚨Mental Health Check Point🚨
To kick things off this week, I actually wanted to do something nice to remind all of my readers that while I may be a troll, I’m a troll with a big heart:
Emily: How are you doing? How is your mental health right now?
Jane: E4P, I’m doing A-OK. My mental health is stable on a good day, thriving on a great day, with the occasional anxiety attack as one does.
Emily: Donald Trump was banned from all social media platforms. Who else do you think deserves that treatment?
Jane:@pasdeemily. Her account is just incredibly, uncontrollably controversial. 0/10.
Do You Know Who Your 23-Year-Old Is Talking to Online? It’s A 7-Year-Old Who’s Cyberbullying Them
Social media is everywhere. Unless you’re a liar or one of those people that says, “No I’m really taking a break from social media right now. Like I deleted all of the apps on my phone so I can detox and really appreciate my life offline” while twitching like a girlie who hasn’t had her daily dose of caffeine, we can all admit to being on social media for a not-insignificant amount of our day.
But it’s not a secret that social media is actually awful for our mental health. It’s almost as bad as drinking bleach or injecting UV rays into your body is at getting rid of COVID.
From one member of Gen Z to another (and by the way, I am Gen Z for anyone who wants to question that. My Uranus is in Aquarius which is a generational marker, and it dominates my natal chart. Now take your Gen Z and astrology slander and mind your business elsewhere), I wanted to see how Jane saw social media affecting our generation and our society:
Emily: What do you think is the single biggest effect social media has had on humans at large?
Jane: I think the most prominent effect that social media has had is that social media and society are no longer two separate entities.
This sociologist named Patrice Flichy published a book at the beginning of the century when the Internet was just entering the mainstream. His book was called The Internet Imaginaire, and in it, he described his early visions for what the Internet could become. Reading his list now, it's crazy to see how he —and many others— thought the Internet would be like. People saw the invention of the World Wide Web as the beginning of a utopia, a world apart from society where there could be a sense of meritocracy, shared ideals, and information, all idealized and cooperative.
Today, it's so apparent that the Internet, and social media especially, don't serve as this utopian world apart from society, but are intertwined in the fabric of society. One can't exist without the other anymore.
Emily: How do you think social media has affected Gen Z's collective mental health?
Jane: This question is a tough one because Gen Z at large is actually the greatest generation yet when it comes to confrontation and openness surrounding mental health stigmatization. However, I think Gen Z was forced into this position because growing up alongside social media basically trashed our generation's collective mental health.
91% of Gen Z'ers have experienced at least one physical or emotional symptom of anxiety or depression. Being on the older end of Gen Z, born in 2000, I feel like people my age were the last era to experience genuine childhood. Growing up, I played outside on the swings and read Harry Potter and Junie B. Jones in paperback. I got my first cell phone at thirteen, and it was a flip phone with a butterfly charm. I didn't have social media of my own until high school.
My younger cousins and neighbors have grown up on iPads, with Snapchat by age seven and their own laptops by age ten. When you spend all day looking at pictures and videos of yourself and comparing those to other people, that's incredibly damaging to mental health. Start that process at an age where your brain is still so underdeveloped, and you are bound to grow up struggling mentally far more than your parents did.
Personally, my second greatest fear after literally dying is being threatened by a pre-teen on the internet. The power they hold is unmatched and if they tried to come for me, my legal drinking age, two degrees, and fantastic ass would be rendered useless.
As a serious journalist trying to get to the bottom of the truth in this, I asked Jane:
Emily: Are you intimidated by 14-year-olds who dance like Shakira did in the 2000s? Why?
Jane: Um, duh. When I was 14 I was the literal textbook definition of cringe. The 14-year-olds on TikTok today are throwing it back in the cutest outfits and better makeup looks than I will ever be capable of doing. But again, when I was 14 I was listening to Hot Chelle Rae on my iTouch and doing the Cupid Shuffle, so like, who's laughing now?????
In all honesty, I don’t think my fear of pre-teens is unwarranted when you see these two photos. You think these girls could stand up to today’s kids???? They would renegade the shit out of us!!!!
Jane Parven at 14. Even the greatest queens have humble beginnings.
You can find this gem and more still on my Facebook page!!!!!
I Couldn’t Help But Wonder… Did Social Media Feed MY Body Dysmorphia?
I have always had a wonky relationship with my body but when there was nowhere else to go last year besides the internet, things only got worse. About three months into the pandemic, after I failed to stick with Chloe Ting and also nearly failed my college gym class, I noticed that I had gained a little quarantine weight. I wasn’t being totally unhealthy but I also wasn’t doing hot yoga three times a week anymore.
By then it was summer, and my TikTok and Instagram felt saturated with thin women looking pretty. Rather than thinking, “Ok girlboss!! Love that bathing suit!!! Get that bread, get that head, then leave!!!” I couldn’t stop thinking about how my body didn’t look like their bodies in my own bathing suit, and that I was somehow lesser for it.
My therapist at the time suggested I seek out accounts run by women whose bodies looked like mine so that I could see a.) that not everyone on my social media feeds should look the same and b.) that I needed to stop thinking of my body as wrong or bad. I thought these other women looked great, so why not apply that thinking to my own body? The first step was validating other people; now, I’m working to continuously validate myself.
One thing that I realized in the midst of all of this was that this was just another iteration of the same issue women have been facing for probably ever, but at least for the last few decades: we are handed an unattainable beauty standard and even when we reach it, we still don’t always feel good about ourselves. And now, we have social media to constantly compare ourselves to others which often makes us feel even worse.
This is also not a small issue: last week, The Daily Show looked at how image editing and filters on social media have severely impacted how teenagers perceive themselves and featured a CNBC survey that found 80% of girls say they compare the way they look to others on social media, and 25% of girls they don’t look good enough without photo editing.
I have my fair share of beef with beauty standards and the internalized pressure to subscribe to them but instead of screaming into the void about it, I wanted to be productive so I decided to talk it out with Jane:
Emily: When we were younger, I remember a lot of people talking about how magazines set forth unrealistic beauty expectations for women. I feel like instead of solving that issue, we just moved onto social media and —coupled with our obsession with celebrity culture— new and more intense expectations have become unavoidable. How do you think the relationship between celebrity culture and social media has impacted how young people, and young women and girls in particular?
Jane: I totally agree.
Issues with the beauty standard have never been solved; they just continue to multiply and shapeshift. Body image issues span genders and generations, but are definitely another level of impactful when it comes to young women and girls. Not only does Gen Z experience more mental health struggles than ever, but we also struggle with a higher percentage of eating disorders than any other generation.
Listen, it's incredibly difficult to practice self-love as a young woman. We have all had that experience where we get lost on the Instagram explore page and then spend an hour in front of the mirror cursing our hips or stomachs or noses or hair. Something that's too easy to forget is that 99% of social media content has been edited, and that so many celebrities pay the big bucks for plastic surgery and lip fillers and spray tans and liposuction.
What I try to remind myself is that my body woke me up this morning and is strong enough to carry me through my day, no matter if I'm feeling sexy or bloated or greasy or fabulous. I also want to say that this issue is one that I think about a lot, and I wish there was an easy fix to it, but I have been so glad to see a small but growing army of influencers who are dedicated to body inclusivity and showing young girls that social media is a vacuum for fake bodies.
It’s undeniable that our culture’s obsession with celebrities is pretty fucked up: we saw what it did to Britney Spears, how it allowed Kendall Jenner to always make the worst commercials she possibly could, and that it brought Bennifer back together.
But as bad as these things are, what celebrity culture does to Gen Z as they form self-image and self-awareness is far worse. We’ve apparently decided that celebrities are infallible until proven guilty, so we trust and follow them and then have a hard time recognizing they’re just messy bitches like the rest of us.
OBVIOUSLY THIS LEADS TO PROBLEMS!!!!
Emily: Jane Parven, in one word— celebrity culture: cool or damaging?
Jane: Damaging, bro. But also? Semi-cool. It's a love/hate.
Emily: Do you see an overall net positive or negative effect of celebrity/influencer culture?
Jane: Honestly, negative.
I will allow myself to mention one positive of celebrity/influencer culture, which is the culture as an avenue for escapism. After a tough day, it can be really, genuinely fun to read People magazine or go on TikTokRoom and just get lost in the sauce of drama that will never have anything to do with me.
But overall, celebrities and influencers on social media are a negative influence, especially when we think about what the idea of "celebrity" actually means. Celebrity has changed a lot in the last twenty years. People become famous now for a viral video, rather than a concrete talent like acting or painting or singing.
And there's also a new brand of celebrity, called the "microcelebrity", a category that a lot of influencers fall into. These are people who create their own lane of celebrity, who are self-made, and use a false transience to build a fanbase. This is where I see a problem.
Controversial figures —and honestly, sometimes genuinely bad people— can build a brand driven by fame at any cost, and in doing so, put themselves in a role model position for impressionable teens. That leaves teens with Internet role models who are destructive or aggressive, which can impact development in an overtly negative manner.
Emily: What do you think is the biggest pressure social media puts on Gen Z?
Jane: Success.
When we open our social media apps we see celebrities and influencers who have a fulfilling, high-paying job, a healthy relationship with an attractive partner, an impeccable apartment, a thriving college experience perfectly balanced between social and academic life, an endless wardrobe. Having all of these things is literally physically impossible. But when we're inundated with people who "have it all," we're left feeling unfulfilled and unworthy.
I often have to remind myself that success is not measured by what's on social media. What we often don't see from these influencers is debt, pimples, panic attacks, existential crises, insomnia, negative bank account balances, jeans that don't fit, crying alone on the floor into a massive glass of wine.
Every human being has good days and bad days, and successes and failures. Don't feel like a personal success for you isn't enough - because it is. *Insert inspirational quote here*
I’m not going to insert a quote there because, while I do have a big heart, at the end of the day I am still a troll.
Is That a Quick Hit of Serotonin I Feel?
While there has to be some better way than this, it’s not like social media is ever going away. As Jane mentioned at the start, social media is inextricable from society and that’s because it is society— it’s just a version of society that takes place just outside of our interpersonal connections, like the East Australian Current in Finding Nemo.
The solution so many older generations who did not grow up with their personalities dependent on and determined by social media put forward is that we all just “log off.” In the words of a pre-Gen Z Gen Z icon, Cher Horowitz, as if!3 Social media has become as much a part of our identity as our clothes or our natal astrological charts.
I asked Jane her thoughts on this dilemma and how she balances some of these downsides with still being an absolute queen on the internet:
Emily: A lot of people (mainly millennials and older generations) say that the solution to social media's negative effects is to just get off it. But for a lot of Gen Z, our identity is tied up in the content we create and consume, our online presence, how we form and share our opinions— so just "getting off of it" is not really a viable option. What tactics have worked to help keep your relationship with social media healthier, or is this something you're still working on?
Jane: As I said before, social media is not something that can ever be shut off. Love it or hate it, it's now eternally intertwined with society at large. And although I've touched on a lot of the negative aspects of it, there are so many positives to be found in social media as well, from connections to creativity to communities to content that would never have existed.
I will forever be working on my relationship with social media, but I think my number one tactic is just setting an intention whenever I can. If I'm socially exhausted and need to decompress with an hour of scrolling on TikTok, that's okay. But if and when I find myself growing anxious or focusing on something that's harmful to me, I'll do my best to log out or log off for a while.
Shameless plug: here's a piece I wrote last year with some more tips on developing a healthy relationship to social media for Very Good Light.
The only thing I can say to this? So true bestie!
I’d like to thank Jane for being a doll always and answering all of these questions so thoughtfully this week. Please follow her on Instagram so you can see what all my hype is about: @jparvs.
For anyone still reading down here, my mental health has been through the wringer this year with, you know, the global pandemic added on top of just being in a pivotal and emotional time of life. I can’t say I’m back to where I was when I was doing my best (which was so unfortunately at the start of March 2020), but I’m comfortable and happy being better than I was last year.
Anyways: check in with your friends and family, even after today when it’s not en vogue to be aware of mental health anymore. And check in with me too if you’d like!!! How are you all doing today? I hope you’re better than last year as well.
Emily: Who's funnier on Twitter: me or Donald Trump?
Jane: No comparison. Donny takes the cake. My fave:
