Mental Disorders And Social Media

534 Words3 Pages

Social media worsens the effect of self-diagnosis. With the increase of social media among adolescents has also increased the amount of mental illnesses in society. This is because people who fake being mentally ill on social media can actually convince their brain that they really are mentally ill, and they can start showing symptoms (Jabr par. 1). There have also been increasing pro-anorexia websites and accounts that influence young teenagers to worry about their weight. For example, there are some websites that are providing inaccurate information about being thin and unhealthy ways to lose weight (Tegna par. 5). Anorexia is already one of the most deadly mental disorders since it is hard to spot quickly. Self-diagnoses of Anorexia and other disorders can cause Hypochondriacs to become worse as well."A lot of the stuff on the Internet, especially on health-related bulletin boards, is pure impression and anecdote," says Barsky, "and they just don't …show more content…

The claims that people are making about how ‘cool’ and ‘fun’ it is to have a mental illness, can lower the self-esteem of people with a serious mental illness (Phelan par. 4). This can lead to an increase in depression and suicide rates among patients. The internet has also created a stigma contradicting the ‘fun’ and ‘cool’ mental illness with the taboo mental illnesses that it is not ‘socially acceptable’ to talk about. The taboo mental illnesses, which are seen as the ‘crazies’ would include Schizophrenia, Depression, and Dissociative Identity Disorder. The people who actually have these types of mental illnesses do not want to admit that they have it because they fear that they may be alienated by their family and friends from the misinformation they received from the internet (Sharif par. 2). Overall, social media and the unawareness of mental illness symptoms have increased