Instagram generation confusing anxiety and stress for mental health condition
THE Instagram generation are confusing normal stress and anxiety for mental health conditions because increased awareness has led to “over interpretation” and “over pathologisation”, the head of a leading public school has warned.
James Dahl, master of Wellington College, said that online diagnosis tools on social media sites like Instagram are convincing many children they have an issue when they are just experiencing “the normal undulations of the teenage life cycle”. The famous Berkshire school is helping pupils to identify and navigate their changing emotions alongside tackling issues including so-called toxic masculinity as part of an all-encompassing well-being curriculum.
Dahl believes social media as well as “armchair diagnoses” by the unqualified are leading to “normal transient forms of teenage upset and distress being interpreted as significant mental health issues”.
“There is a prevalence on social media of accounts and people offering tools for self-diagnosis and the language of psychiatry and medicalisation and diagnosis is in the mainstream.
“All you have to do is flip through any teenage stream on Instagram and you will see people say ‘I can tell you in 15 seconds if you’re depressed’ and it is all rubbish and what it is doing is whipping up this landscape where there is too much interpretation and self-diagnosis around the normal ups and downs of what it means to be a teenager.
“What happens now is that too many will say ‘Oh, I’ve got anxiety’, but what they actually mean is ‘At the moment, I’m feeling anxious’. That’s very different to a medically diagnosed mental health condition which can be horrific and debilitating.”
Wellington, founded by Queen Victoria in 1856, has long been recognised as a pioneer in teenage wellbeing after former master Anthony Seldon introduced “happiness lessons” in 2006. Today, the school’s wellbeing curriculum includes a focus on “what it means to be a boy or man in 2024” against the backdrop of the toxic masculinity debate.