Mental (ill)health and Instagram

I put out a question last week - How do you tell if someone is faking mental illness on social media? - because I was curious to see if people would humour me in the first place, and to see if people really put thought into something like this at all. I'm happy that a few of you did respond, and sincerely, so thank you.

The question wasn't straightforward though it seemed to be. Some of your answers were simple. Some were layered. I got what I wanted so I thought I'd explain why I asked the question at all.

These are my thoughts about what you said. I'm sharing them because I'd like us (me included) to be more mindful users of social media, give things some thought before reaching conclusions, and develop a sense of complexity about people's lives that social media takes away from us.

I was able to place your responses into four broad categories.

1) "what?! Do people really do that?!"

2) if they do fake mental illness then it should warrant concern or support rather than negative judgement

3) people with 'real' mental illnesses or mental health concerns avoid talking about it (and therefore anybody who does talk about it is faking it)

4) actual strategies you use to determine authenticity, like are they oversharing or making it your whole personality or doing it to gain brownie points, what is their context, etc. The most helpful response in this category was - "I decide based on how they treat other people with mental illness."

Before anything else, why do we expect authenticity on an app (or many apps) that are designed for performance? Everyone has a brand on Instagram; yes, even private accounts. My brand is sunlight, food, books, poems, the sea, the moon, etc. I like to portray myself as someone who takes herself seriously in just the right amounts. I want to be approachable but from a distance and so my stories are unfiltered and shitpost-y but my feed is aesthetic, yet honest. If you think I'm being self-important, you may be right, but pause and you'll find your own brand too. Do you not find that some songs you will listen to, but only some others you will share on your stories? That's your brand. Or your aesthetic, whatever you want to call it. You're constantly performing it. 

Secondly, haven't you noticed that Instagram is full of aspirational happiness? Extravagant travel and food and cars and clothes? Because Instagram is (supposed to be) instant, and because we only see shiny happy things on it, we start to believe that everyone's lives are what we see online. We want those lives. We lose perspective. We fail to see that everyone's lives are at least as complex as ours. I'm sure you've come across posts that talk about this, too.

We (are supposed to) use social media to unwind, connect with people, look at memes, or share our art/work. We don't want to listen to sob stories online because they happen too often around us. Our lives are difficult, news is depressing, there's an ongoing pandemic. And so we encourage shiny happy posts - there's a reason why 'social media influencer' is a real job that earns real money.

This is where it gets tricky.

At some point we realise that the disconnect between our online and offline lives is far too great to be meaningful. And so we lament the superficiality of Instagram. We even blame influencers for it - they're in a bubble which is almost on a different plane than us.

But when someone popular talks about their 'real' struggles for longer than 1 sentence and 10 seconds, it's attention-seeking, and we get suspicious or tune out. So I want to ask - how can someone be attention-seeking if they...already...have the attention?

Fine, what about non-influencers who talk about mental health struggles? They're definitely doing it for attention, right? One more question - why would anyone talk about, and fake(!), mental health struggles if it only invites apprehension or apathy?

Social media can be an effective tool to have conversations about difficult topics, like mental health, that you can't broach with your family, friends or colleagues because you're scared of the consequences. That's probably why some of us think that people with actual mental health problems don't talk about it - because they can't in real life. Isn't that a good enough reason to talk about it on social media, where they can control who is part of the conversation, whether it is to get support or to spread awareness or vent? 

And finally, if someone really is faking mental illness for the wrong reasons (to exploit someone, to manipulate someone, etc),  I would start by asking why they need to take this step to get what they want. And what they want is obviously the next question, but perhaps if we think hard about the first one, it explains parts of the second one too.

I remember a comedian was accused in the MeToo movement and his statement was focused on his mental illness too much for anyone's comfort. I was raging at the time but now I would ask why he felt the need to fall back on something as unpleasant as mental illness - was it, maybe, the absence of a good system of accountability? Was it for the same reason that he probably wanted to be absolved of what he was accused of (regardless of whether he actually did it)? Was it that mental health has gotten a lot of attention recently but that hasn't served any real purpose like building awareness, sources of community support, advocacy, making it easy to use it as an excuse?

Sometimes I need help with asking the right questions, so I hope this is helpful and makes you a kinder person on the Internet. :)