Social Media Use as Self-Therapy or Alternative Mental Help-Seeking Behavior

Abstract

Social media use is pervasive in many developed societies. Social Media is a form of digital media and expansive platform that allows users to share information, and socialize with other users (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). There are multiple formats of social media being used by society today. Social networking has become such a large part of the everyday life of people such that many individuals repeatedly post or check their social media accounts. College students use social media to create virtual friendships and relationships that allow them to share information about their personal lives. Information that is shared as posts on social media including personal problems and struggles often elicit both positive and negative feedback (comments and likes). Thus, social media use has caused profound changes in the way people share their emotional and psychological concerns. It is unclear however, whether young adults' use of social media to share their personal problems constitute self-therapy and impact the tendency to seek formal mental health services. This paper examines perceptions on social media use, self-therapy and mental health seeking behavior among college students, as well as factors that mediate this behavior. It also explores the implications for mental health help seeking behavior among this group and proposes best practices for providing them with relevant and timely information.

How Do Aging Self-Stereotypes Relate to Social Isolation in Older Adults? The Intervening Roles of Sense of Coherence and Cellphone Use

“…Consistent with the stereotype embodiment theory (Levy, 2009), as older adults gain access to more diverse social cultures and are exposed to more forms of social interaction through their phones, the harm of such negative stereotypes on social isolation will be reduced. Cellphone use also facilitates the use of coping strategies by providing a channel for seeking help (Gere et al, 2020). Older adults can easily obtain more news and information through their cellphones, which could help them understand the changing world.…”

Social Media Use for Youth Mental Health Awareness and Help-Seeking Attitudes: A Systematic Review

“…All twelve articles were empirical studies. Of these, five studies utilized a quantitative approach through the survey method (Chen et al, 2020;Stawarz et al, 2019;Gere et al, 2019;Naslund et al, 2019) and the pre-post-test survey method (Thompson et al, 2021). Four studies reported qualitative evaluation, where two of them used content analysis method (Latha et al, 2020;Saha et al, 2019), one used focus group method (O'Reilly et al, 2019), one used semi-structured interview (Noorwali et al, 2022) and one used crosssectional analysis (Pretorius et al, 2022).…”

“…Based on the discussion above, we believe that there is a promising potential that social media can be beneficial for youth to communicate about mental health and to seek help from others in dealing with their mental health concerns. Nevertheless, empirical research on the use of social media in mental health communication is still scarce in the current literature, except for a few studies investigating social media use for promoting mental health awareness (e.g., Latha et al, 2020;O'Reilly et al, 2019;Pretorius et al, 2022;Saha et al, 2019;Plaisime, et al, 2020) and its impact on help-seeking behavior (Gere et al, 2019;Pretorius et al, 2022;Thompson et al, 2021;Chen et al, 2022;Naslund et al, 2019). Only a few of these studies, however, focus on the youth population (Plaisime et al, 2020;O'Reilly et al, 2019;Chen, et al, 2022;Gere et al, 2019;Thompson et al, 2021).…”

Mental health professionals as influencers on TikTok and Instagram: What role do they play in mental health literacy and help-seeking?

“…According to the Pew Research Center's 2021 report on social media use, the majority of young people aged 18–29 year-old, make use of Instagram (76 %), Snapchat (75 %) and TikTok (55 %) ( Anderson and Auxier, 2021 ). Young people use social media for several purposes including entertainment, communication, connecting with peers, education and more recently, to gain health information ( Gere et al, 2020 ; Goodyear and Armour, 2021 ). It has been reported that it is more likely that young people will pose health queries, including mental health queries, through the Internet than through any other means ( Scott et al, 2022 ).…”

“…Innovative ways to improve mental health literacy and help-seeking need to be explored. The stigma surrounding mental health negatively impacts help-seeking and it has been found that individuals are now starting to seek help in spaces with which they are already familiar, such as social media ( Pagnotta et al, 2018 ; Gere et al, 2020 ; Triplett et al, 2022 ). It offers a means to overcome the traditional barriers to help-seeking such as lack of access (including cost and location), a preference for self-reliance and the avoidance of stigma ( Scott et al, 2022 ).…”