Mental Health as #Content
I feel like every time I'm on YouTube I'm being diagnosed with a new mental disorder. I remember back in 2020 there were all these "I discovered I had ADHD from Tiktok" articles and, ironically, a few weeks later a close friend texted me that she learned she had ADHD from Tiktok too. In fact, there's been an explosion of people with ADHD who discovered their conditions via deep dives into Mental Health Tock or YouTube.
I've been tight-lipped about it around my IRL friends, but the same thing has been happening to me. YouTube seems very convinced I have autism. Although I've watched several videos about it, I still can't help but think, "Doesn't everyone have these problems? I thought everyone had these problems."
I think my favorite "mental health" YouTuber at the moment is HealthyGamerGG because he validates a lot of things I've been suspecting. I don't think it's some kind of funny coincidence that anxiety, depression, and ADHD is on the rise. It's all related to science and technology.
According to him, who's a psychiatrist, the rise of anxiety and depression (and even conditions like "alexithymia") are mostly due to social media addiction and the short-term dopamime rush of being online or playing video games. As a society, we've learned how to self-soothe through technology rather than deal with situations that make us uncomfortable. The long-term effect of this is a sense of numbness and a lack of motivation. Next thing you know you're doomscrolling on Tiktok at 4am wondering why you're like this.
However, the problem isn't you. The problem is your brain. Your brain won't allow you to change because it's been rewired via these addictive habits. He also thinks this is the reason "quiet quitting" and "retire at 50 and live on a beach" mentalities have risen. When people feel numb inside, they look at exterior reasons to motivate them. The reality is that neither of those things will make people happier since the problem is internal.
I highly recommend watching his videos to learn more because I'm not a doctor and I'm probably not describing it accurately. But the whole epiphany has really helped put things into perspective.
I was reading another article about how employers are giving their Gen Z employees socialization classes, and the Reddit comments were obviously all over the place. But one comment that stood out was from a professor who described the generation as "zombies."
"They don't react to anything," they wrote.
Is this numbness, this "feeling dead inside," this anxiety, all just the result of addiction? Because it's interesting that one of the symptoms of autism is a lack of expression and a feeling of discomfort in social situations. It'll be interesting to learn in the next coming years where mental conditions end and where technology-reliance begins because right now there's too much overlap.