Is Neurodivergence Becoming a Trend on Social Media?
Is Neurodivergence Becoming a Trend on Social Media?
Is Neurodivergence Becoming a Trend on Social Media?
Social media often promotes mental health awareness, but is it also leading to misunderstandings and self-diagnosis? Explore how labels affect mental health today.
I see a lot of content on social media these days related to mental health. While it is nice to see more mental health awareness, that’s not necessarily the only content out there. There is a lot of content that makes people self-diagnose themselves in a manner that is not accurate leading to… well, mental health as a trend?
When Every Quirk Gets a Label
Neurodivergence is a spectrum that was meant to describe people who had autism and the term now covers out mental health issues such as ADHD, dyslexia, etc.. Nowadays, we throw that word out so easily if we do the slightest thing differently.
If you like to be neat and tidy… OCD, if you have burnout… ADHD, if you’re shy and introverted… autistic. We love to throw around terms like anxiety and trauma and justify some behaviour that is well within our control.
The Harm of Casual Self-Diagnosis
When we self-diagnose like this, it takes away the positive effect of spreading mental health awareness and those genuinely affected by it are only pushed down.
We’ve turned to using mental health as an excuse for certain behaviour, even making it trendy to be autistic, not realising the seriousness of those who are genuinely autistic. Social media preys on people who are already searching for an identity and when their feed is flooded with such content, they naively choose this to be their identity just so they can find some community.
A Changing World or a Label for the Times?
But, then again, are we all neurodivergent? This is a question that comes into our minds. In this new world order that we live in, things are changing so rapidly and people are also changing as such. Is it normal to be neurodivergent in a capitalist world is the paradoxical question that we can think upon.
While it is good to be self-aware of our behaviour, we shouldn’t be relying on symptoms described to us by the internet and come to conclusions without even consulting a real psychologist.
#MentalHealthMatters, #SelfDiagnosis, #Neurodiversity, #MentalHealthAwareness, #SocialMediaImpact
