Gemma Spake

See examples of people feeling invalidated, people feeling like they are missing out on understanding, they are missing out on help because the language that they would typically use to describe their experience has now and is now used in very general ways that maybe aren't accurate.

Maybe.

Unaccurate, I will say.

Sometimes people, again, this is all up for debate and obviously everybody's situation is different.

This is just a general trend of what we're seeing with the oversimplification.

Listen, I think what I should say is the role of social media is not simply good or bad.

It has the potential to reduce shame, but it also has the potential to spread confusion.

Both things are true and both things are things we should pay attention to.

It really does help previously missed people find themselves, especially people for whom these conversations are not something that has had in their environment or in their families.

But it can mean that that is done in an unsupported way.

We have to recognize the paradoxical effect and the flow on impact that this has on the

accessibility of services on pigeonholing and on the dilution of other people's experiences.

The other thing that general highly stereotyped content made for broad audiences and mass engagement doesn't do is it doesn't understand your context the way that a professional can.

Everybody is coming into this space onto social media with so many different things going on

And some of those things would actually explain their behavior and what they're going through better than a diagnosis.

But if the only video or content they see is like, the only way you can be experiencing this is if you have this, that can become really confusing.

I read this piece the other day that talks about how a desire to label everything, every single human behavior is meaning that some parts of the human experience that probably need working on

are not being changed because it's all coming down to a problem with the individual.

So basically like everybody is depressed and nobody is investigating the fact that the systems around us are becoming more depressing, right?

Everybody is anxious.