Growing up a digital native, I have felt the pressure of only showing the best parts of my life on social media, then checking the number of likes as a measure of self-worth. Living life became a sort of competition: showing off what I bought, what I was doing, or who I was with to feel like I was keeping up with the people I knew.
I was diagnosed with clinical depression in my sophomore year of college. It took a while for me to accept that. Eventually, I came to terms with my depression, and when I did, I began to figure out what the triggers for my depressive episodes were. One was the internal comparison I made between myself and other people on social media.
Those comparisons made me believe that I was not good enough. I decided to unfollow all the influencer accounts featuring superficial posts because I thought it would help.
Soon after, I deleted Instagram off my phone because I fell back into a pretty bad depressive episode and wanted to take a break from social media. After a few months of recovering and self-discovery, I re-downloaded Instagram with a new “goal”. I began to share my feelings and stories about my struggles with mental health. I did that to hold myself accountable to those feelings and reflect upon them. I also did it to show others out there who also might be dealing with depression that they aren’t alone.
In my post that I wrote for Half the Story, I mentioned Asian representation on media growing up. I discussed how the lack of representation of my community made me feel inferior and unattractive, which made me project that onto my own race. Things have gotten better now and progress is being made, but not enough. This is where change within social media can play a major role. Removing the stigma of sharing struggles allows support systems to be built and humanness to be seen.
That’s why I started sharing both the good and the bad of my life.
I wanted to set an example, especially when I was back home in Taiwan for my gap year. Mental health is even more of a taboo there than it is in the United States, and it shows through their use of social media. Everyone seems to be an “Instagram influencer”, posting nothing but superficial activities and face-tuned pictures of themselves. No one seems to be starting conversations about mental health.
So yes, I do believe that not being able to see how many likes another person got can lessen the impact social media has on mental health among people, specifically the Gen-Zs. I also agree with Cam who was featured in the Huffpost article. I try not to check the number of likes I get, but it's hard sometimes. I can imagine that it might be even more difficult for others.
