- A few months ago, Laura U., a typical 16-year-old at an international school in Paris, sat at her computer wishing she looked just like the emaciated women on her Tumblr dashboard. She pined to be mysterious, haunted, fascinating, like the other people her age that she saw in black and white photos with scars along their wrists, from taking razor blades to their skin. She convinced herself that the melancholic quotes she was reading—“Can I just disappear?” or “People who die by suicide don’t want to end their lives, they want to end their pain”—applied to her.
Among Tumblr’s 140+ million blogs, social communities form around specific topics: music, fashion, photography, and also kinds of disorders. Months ago Laura was part of one such community, scrolling through hundreds of photographs on Tumblr that evoke negative emotions through art and call it depression. Black and white photographs of mystical emaciated women who stare off into the distance put psychological torment and beauty on the same page, and quotes like “So it’s okay for you to hurt me, but I can’t hurt myself?” and "I want to die a lovely death," try to justify self-harm. All this is at the tip of anyone’s fingertips: anyone can search tags like “self-harm,” “depression,” or “sadness,” and find thousands of blogs with a similarly distorted vision of what it means to be depressed.
I don't think it's limited to depression. Most social websites (even hubski) tend to steer towards extremes, because those appear more interesting. Depression, but also happiness, gratitude and many others are inflated if it can provide more likes / notes / upvotes. There is no room for mediocrity in systems designed to produce the best content.
I agree with you, but I also see a parallel trend toward simplification. No "kinda happy" or "sort of sad" but "omg euphoria" and "ultimate fail." Even CNN now categorizes news into "Good" or "Bad" with no subtlety, no room left for nuance. I wonder how the elimination of "shades of grey" will affect our experiences as humans.
Mob mentality is a scary thing. Utterly scary. It's the same concept as the Golden Gate Bridge and the suicides that happen there. Committing suicide on that bridge is famous, and since it has been sensationalized so much, people keep killing themselves there. Tumblr can equate to the Golden Gate. If you see a picture of someone's cuts with a poem attached getting thousands of shares, it makes teens wish to cut themselves and tell the world because it's something that is glorified by attention. People love attention.
I really wish psychology was more commonly taught in high school, especially with the apparent rise lately in people who identify as having depression/anxiety issues. Having an actual understanding of those conditions instead of treating it like beautiful suffering could positively impact a lot of lives. I do think that we're seeing a growth in awareness for mental illness, how to approach it in others, how to identify it, etc, and maybe part of it being a bigger thing is you have kids in high school picking it up and turning into what the article was talking about. It's a bad thing, but maybe it's a symptom of a larger positive thing.
actual depression fucking sucks. It's not something you want to glorify. Hyperbole and a half describes it really well. Which is great, because I see those articles get posted everywhere. I still struggle with it some days, and it's horrible. It's really easy to tell the difference between someone "faking" and someone who is legitimately depressed. One is a "oh I'm so sad. I'm depressed." the other is "what the hell do I mean, I'm depressed? I'm just shit, not depressed. Depression is for people with reasons. I'm just lazy. Might as well just keep this to myself, because most likely people will agree that I'm just making shit up." Every little action plays into it as well. Someone you were talking to didn't respond and instead started talking to the other person you were with? Oh, that person obviously hates you and you don't have anything interesting to say. Shit like that.
I feel it's always been a research challenge to stay in step with the subject of study, but the technological landscape develops and changes so quickly nowadays, I just don't understand how most researchers (psychological, sociological, possibly bio and neuro?) ever hope to complete studies that produce relevant and meaningful results for the time period they finish the study in? (Please correct me or steer me in the right direction if this is little more than a weak ramble)