Opening up about mental health in the Youtube community
Where speaking about one’s mental health once seemed taboo in everyday life, it has become more and more normalized over the past several years, especially in the Youtube community.
Creating Youtube videos can often sound like a dream job to many viewers. To students, filming vlogs about what they’ve bought on recent shopping hauls or the viral challenges that they’ve participated in (read: ice bucket challenges, eating the largest bowl of pho noodles at a restaurant, and more) can definitely seem a lot more entertaining than finishing one’s Networks problem set. However, as often is the case with social media, what content creators create and put online is oftentimes the “highlight reel” of their work; the endless hours of script writing, filming, negotiating sponsorship deals and answering phone calls are the “behind the scenes” people often times do not see and thus, is the part of the job that is easy to forget for most viewers. Oftentimes content creators can feel as if they have to put on a mask to relate to their viewers, demonstrating a friendly and bubbly persona when they really might be struggling with the loneliness of having to constantly generate ideas, film videos, and meet deadlines.
However, with mental health becoming a more popular issue in the news nowadays, it has also become more popular on Youtube. Content creators such as filmmaker Matt Lees have opened up about his mental health struggles, stating in an interview with Guardian writer Simon Parkin that “when you’ve got thousands of people giving you direct feedback on your work, you really get the sense that something in your mind just snaps. [Individuals] just aren’t built to handle empathy and sympathy on that scale” (Parkin). Along with Matt Lees video, other Youtubers have brought their personal struggles with maintaining a career on social media to light, such as Elle Mills, and Arden Cho. The manner in which more and more content creators are opening up about their mental health and struggles with Youtube can be seen as a network effect and information cascade. What once was a taboo issue has become more and more commonly talked about because displaying an authentic perspective on Youtube has become more appreciated by viewers, and has generated an information cascade in which these videos have become more and more popular. While that’s not to say Youtubers make these videos in order to become viral, it has become more commonplace to see these videos because we have so many individuals opening up their mental health which has allowed viewers to also feel more comfortable with themselves too. In that way, Youtube’s information cascade on mental health has certainly had some positive impact on the mental health of its viewers.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/08/youtube-stars-burnout-fun-bleak-stressed