
Her Facebook life looked perfect. How social media masks mental illness (2015) - colinprince
https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/her-facebook-life-looked-perfect-madison-holleran-suicide-highlights-how-social-media-masks-mental-illness-1.3071302
======
motohagiography
A useful analogy is to think about social media in terms of steroid use in
cycling.

An athlete on the Tour de France knows most winners cheat and the instance of
cheaters in the standings clusters densely toward the top.

To even qualify for the game with cheaters, you need to either be a standard
deviation better than they are without their cheat, or compromise and also
cheat, which in turn legitimizes their tactics.

Social media exacerbates nascent mental illness by creating this same double
bind for young people, where to "succeed," in life by getting access to
cliques and networks, school placements, job opportunities, and investment
opportunities, you need to "play the game," which today means to fabricate an
image of performative conventional success and the perception you are a viable
centre of attention.

They know it's wrong, everyone else knows it's probably wrong, but the whole
exercise is a temporary suspension of disbelief in exchange for lottery style
rewards, provided by sponsors.

Good news on both fronts is you can enjoy riding bicycles or any other sport,
and indeed life, without the often horrific and spiritually hollow compromises
of elite competition, which social media seems to approximate.

The greatest irony is that it is in more humble and private pursuits where
most of the real stories of courage, dignity, and personal triumph that people
only fake in performances on social media can truly be found.

~~~
kacamak
You can just not participate. You are making it sound as a do or die thing.

Facebook does not help you in getting any sucess at all.

~~~
izzydata
This is just circumstantial evidence, but from my personal experience of just
not participating in "playing the game" it would always result in losing
friends and relationships. This was before the time of Facebook and other
modern social media, but there are all kinds of social games you are expected
to participate in if you want to be part of things. Perhaps I won the game by
not participating and never being stressed about these things, but who knows
what things would have been like if I didn't close so many doors by not
playing along.

I imagine today you would be more isolated than ever before if you decide to
not participate. This might not matter much in work life, but for kids in
school it is huge.

~~~
50
It's certainly a trade-off: by not partaking in social media and/or popular
culture, you are bound to come up empty and alone in modern day. I usually
like to say, do whatever you like to do, but remember to wear the world like a
loose fitting shirt and don't let it bind you.

------
umvi
How social media masks mental illness?

More like how people mask mental illness.

It's scary how many people are seething tempests of confused emotion under the
hood yet can put on a convincing facade that they are perfectly normal. Just
last week one of my co-workers who I've known for years and seemed completely
normal on the outside disappeared one day to attempt a Nice-style terrorist
attack with a U-haul truck (the FBI nabbed him before anyone was killed).

~~~
eljimmy
I think a lot of people, me included, have quite a high barrier to things
they're willing to discuss or reveal to co-workers regarding their personal
life.

~~~
byproxy
I think a lot of people, (probably) me included, have quite a high barrier to
things they're willing to discuss or reveal to people they've paid to discuss
and reveal these things to.

~~~
exolymph
Definitely true of me. Even after years of therapy with a practitioner I liked
and largely trusted, I still didn't fully open up about my issues unless there
was an immediate crisis that I couldn't cope with emotionally.

------
strikelaserclaw
Social media is a slow acting poison. It's extensive damaging effects will
only be felt in 10-20 years. For the most part, it amplifies all the negative
traits of humanity, twitter encourages ad hominem style debates and
substanceless statements from all strata of soceity. Instagram/FB takes the
need for human validation and the need to keep pretenses among our peers to a
global scale. The next generation will be much more comfortable behind a
screen where they can maintain an illusory persona than in real life. This is
not taking into accounts the addictive nature of social media in general and
how they employ research scientists to work on making their products more
addictive.

~~~
RandallBrown
It also lets you stay connected to people in ways that were impossible before.

Chance meetings can become longtime friendships. Great memories that would
have faded away no longer have to.

For me, social media has mostly improved my life.

~~~
Karunamon
The degree with which people compare social media to drugs (with all the
baggage that entails) fucking astounds me sometimes. I would fully expect a
serious reply to a comment like yours to be "that's just because you're
addicted".

It's a fad in some circles to hate on social media. And a particularly
tiresome one, since it's doing nothing more than highlighting the pathological
ways humans have always behaved, even in its absence. Availability heuristic.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
Humans have always fought in wars and killed one another but why are modern
weapons so much more dangerous? Technology has the potential to enable the
dark aspects of humanity to be more destructive than ever. Make no mistake,
the HN crowd is not your average person, how social media applies to you does
not reflect how it will apply to the majority in the world.

~~~
anticensor
Because modern weapons are designed to enable both sides to lose at the same
time.

------
Noos
This has very little to do with social media. It helps to read the linked espn
article, which goes into far greater detail.

[http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagr...](http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagram-
account-university-pennsylvania-runner-showed-only-part-story)

"Everyone now agrees that Madison was depressed, though she had never
previously exhibited symptoms. (Depression exists on Jim's side of the
family.) Something had changed with her brain chemistry. She was not seeing
the world in the same way she had before. She had lost weight too, had become
so thin as to appear sick.

The day before Madison returned to Penn for spring semester, she had a session
with her therapist that Jim (note her father) also attended. She admitted to
having suicidal thoughts. "If you have suicidal thoughts, don't act them out,"
her doctor said. "Either call me or call someone in your family.""

I don't see how social media can mask anything once this happens. The article
mentions Jim din't like to discuss suicide as to encourage it, but he also
mentioned transferring, and Madison herself went to her coach with a letter to
quit track.

There's no "masking" at this point. The issue is, to be blunt people don't
take these kind of things seriously. They want to believe the person will
power through it and any signs that they do they seize on. I think maybe the
sense of public failure-that she would have to drop out due to the pressure-
guides this, as well as the realization of a mental illness.

I know HN has their own memes now, but it's kind of odd to blame social media
when the young woman had plenty of real contact with family, friends, and
coaches. But people here are invested into "social media= bad" that articles
like this really fuel their prejudices.

~~~
oneiric
For even more detail, there is a book.
[http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org](http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org)

------
mtw
To be honest, there's no reason to portray an authentic lifestyle on Facebook.
Because the more accurate or authentic you share on Facebook, the more likely
they cut/data mine/analyze it to the point where they (and also everyone else
on Facebook) might know about your life than you do - with predictive AI,
that's worth a lot of thousands dollars of ad dollars.

I don't have any mental illness but I do a deliberate effort to portray
something else on Facebook and Twitter. You can't share anything private. Who
knows, border agents, customs or criminals might use it against you in the
future.

~~~
joncrane
The big thing I've heard is vacation photos in real time means unoccupied
dwelling, which means ripe for breaking and entering.

Sort of like "huge pile of empty high end electronics boxes on curb on trash
(recycle) day after holidays" is also a signal.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, though.

~~~
johnchristopher
> Sort of like "huge pile of empty high end electronics boxes on curb on trash
> (recycle) day after holidays" is also a signal.

But what can be done? Spread the disposal over many months? The signal is
still there.

~~~
ozzyman700
Recycle cardboard into pulp for home printing of your manifesto

~~~
johnchristopher
Manifesto ?

~~~
ozzyman700
Oh if you don't have a manifesto you should start

~~~
johnchristopher
Would you please explain what you mean?

------
daenz
The article mentions social stigma to showing that you're unhappy, as if the
stigma is wrong. To me, the stigma is natural behavior. Most people don't want
to be around people who are deeply depressed. It takes a lot of energy to
counteract that. In my opinion, it can be contagious like happiness can be
contagious. This is not to say that I don't think depressed people need help
and support though.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I don't understand what it would look like
if outwardly showing your depression wasn't stigmatized. The only alternative
I can come up with is that people would have to be totally apathetic to your
happiness or your sadness.

~~~
PaulHoule
I think also there are people who will take advantage if you show any form of
weakness. Thus people have a good reason to not come clean about their
feelings.

~~~
tachyonbeam
Having been depressed, I think the main fear people have is of pushing people
away. If you're not "fun", people won't want to spend time with you. Your
friends will support you for a bit, but they have limited patience too.
Comforting someone who's feeling down takes energy, and you know very well
that there's a limit to how much of that you can ask other people to do for
you.

There's some kind of balance to be had. I find that I can express my sadness,
but I have to be mindful that when I hang out with friends, even when I'm
feeling down, I don't make it all about me. I have to still try to be a good
friend and listen, etc. Avoid being someone who's emotionally draining to be
around. Friendship is an exchange.

------
menacingly
This article feels misguided because it seems to start from the assumption
that your social media presence is supposed to be a whole representation of
your life. It's like saying James Bond movies fail because they don't show him
going to the bathroom.

They're not failing, it just isn't their intent. If you're contemplating
suicide, perhaps your distant aunts and people you last saw in high school are
not the appropriate lifeline.

~~~
pixl97
Right, how many hours a day are people exposed to james bond movies versus
exposure to social media?

------
maxaf
Well, don't all just sit there: tell your children that social media is
poison, and act aggressively to root it out. The current generation of young
adults is likely beyond salvation, but the one after - the current <17 cohort,
perhaps - may still be helped.

I'm around children a lot, especially the 10-12 age group which happens to be
my daughter's social circle. I'm amazed to see how many kids are glued to
Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and other such apps that I don't even know about.
Either we act now, or it'll be too late for that generation, as well.

It's very easy for an adult to lock down which apps can be used on a child's
device, which websites can be accessed, etc. Social media _can_ be stopped,
but this must happen one tedious step at a time.

------
habosa
I knew before I clicked this would be Madison. I didn't know her but I went to
Penn and was a student there when she died. It shook the whole school, and
then a wave of other student suicides followed. I'm sure all of these other
students had happy pictures on their Facebook too, but for whatever reason
Madison's story was the one that went national and still seems to echo back.
Nothing to say that hasn't been said ... it's beyond tragic and nobody will
ever be able to explain it.

I do think the focus on social media here is misguided or at least not
productive. Penn and other colleges need more readily available mental health
services and programs to reduce the stigma around accessing them. From what I
hear, not much has changed on that front.

~~~
DoreenMichele
_Penn and other colleges need more readily available mental health services_

Unfortunately, that's actually kind of a bandaid approach. It's a little like
saying "We don't really need to make the factory safer so fewer people get
hurt. We just need another doctor in our on-site clinic and it should be a
free visit if the injury occurred on the job."

You go to a mental health professional because something is wrong. Often, that
something _wrong_ is social/environmental.

This trope that depressed people just need better access to mental health
professionals is a left-handed way of blaming those individuals and suggesting
they are simply randomly defective and washing our hands of trying to make a
better world. In most cases, they are more rightly viewed as "the presenting
problem" \-- the signifier of something systemic gone wrong.

Family counselors are routinely presented with a situation where, for example,
a teenager is acting out and being labeled as The Problem. They never accept
that as the actual truth. They know that they need to deal with the family
dynamic. Simply blaming the teen as the easy out will not go good places.

------
olivermarks
This FB example of the social 'stage set' individuals can set up for
themselves at no cost to project on the world is arguably a micro example of
what the pr machine behind politicians and showbiz personalities push out to
us.

It's getting harder and harder to find what's authentic unless you actually
manage to physically meet these people in unmanaged and scripted situations...

------
hjk05
It’s sad how often social media has to take the blame for social iinteractions
in general. Yes alcoholics, drugadicts, manically depressiv and terrorists all
Seem normal to passive observere and sometimes even to passive friends. That
has nothing to do with facebook, Instagram, snapchat or any other social media
platform.

------
distant_hat
When people don't have a perfect "Facebook life" they are castigated for
oversharing and washing dirty linen in public. On a public medium like
Facebook, you keep things perfect because everyone from your boss to your
juniors and your grandmother is reading.

~~~
tachyonbeam
That's true. I started a new job where all my coworkers (including my boss)
added me on Facebook. I recently realized that I'm now censoring myself more
than I was before. It's a question of status: I don't want to broadcast to my
coworkers that I sometimes go to electronic music events. I know they would
judge me negatively. My girlfriend recently broke up with me. I didn't say
anything on Facebook either, because I don't want to seem like a whiner. Maybe
it's not such a bad thing, the net result is that I participate less in public
discussions on Facebook, and instead discuss these things privately with close
friends instead.

------
ppeetteerr
What if it was not the fault of social media? What if the platforms were only
there for people to express themselves in which ever way they felt comfortable
doing publicly? It seems that this woman was not speaking to her father about
her mental illness nor to her friends. Social media might have shocked the
observer but the mask is only created in the minds of her followers ("I
thought she was a one-dimensional happy person. I'm shocked to discover there
is more to this person than her public profile!")

Perhaps the real story here is about the audience of this woman's profile.
They were naive in thinking that a collection of photos and posts represents a
person in its entirety.

~~~
rchaud
What if the platforms were only there for people to express themselves in
which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly?

If the social media companies limited themselves to just that, we wouldn't be
having this discussion. The fact is, they specifically zero in on stuff that
"engages", so if you happened to innocently like a friend's vacation photo,
your feed will be modified to show you more of that stuff, because the machine
thinks that's what you want to see all the time.

If you're involved in animal rights advocacy, don't be surprised if your feed
is full of horrible pictures of overcrowding and abusive conditions on farms.
If you're interested in fitness, IG will show you a flood of semi-pornographic
"workout routines" of fitness models, but very little about proper form.

These are platforms where the search functionality is intentionally gimped to
search for usernames and hashtags as opposed to actual text content, which a
lot of IG posts have; it's not all just pics and videos.

~~~
ppeetteerr
> which ever way they felt comfortable doing publicly

They are.

Your argument seems to confound the author and the audience. Sure, the
audience is shown only what they like. As you correctly point out, that is the
engagement social media seeks to maximize. The author, on the other hand, is
free to publish what they choose.

~~~
rchaud
The first sentence of my post was quoting the OP. I mistyped and didn't
include the " >" symbol originally

------
laythea
Isn't this part of the problem. I mean "facebook life" is an expression I do
not use.

I highly recommend others don't also.

~~~
themacguffinman
How does avoiding the term help at all? Will restricting our vocabulary
somehow counteract the phenomenon of people portraying different lives on
their Facebook profiles?

~~~
laythea
Using the term "facebook life" demonstrates a certain mentality

------
throw7
Blaming "social media" is as dumb as blaming the young adult book
"Reconstructing Amelia". Heck, if I was to presume anything, I'd blame her
parents before blaming anything else (read: i'm not).

Who has it harder? The jock with the flawless physique, the hottest
girlfriend, and the perfectly thrown spiral; or the nerd who get's pushed
around and laughed at by all the girls? The answers are not so easy.

------
gerbilly
We live in the society of the spectacle as predicted by Guy Debord, in which
he argues that authentic social life has been replaced with its
representation.

Relevant quotes:

"All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."

“The spectacle is a social relation between people that is mediated by an
accumulation of images that serve to alienate us from a genuinely lived life.
The image is thus an historical mutation of the form of commodity fetishism.”

“... just as early industrial capitalism moved the focus of existence from
being to having [things], post-industrial culture has moved that focus from
having to appearing.”

~~~
pixl97
We have become _Simulacra and Simulation_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality)

------
anm89
Why would facebook be the place where you choose to publicly portray your
mental illness? Most people are going to choose to share some positive aspects
of their live. Should they be posting emotional outbursts or breakdowns?

I take plenty of issues with social media but this is just facebook bashing
for sport.

------
keepmesmall
To me it seems to be caused by the technological imbalance caused by DRM. If
people have social media clients that are wholly in their control (to e.g.
integrate a bunch of different personas, platforms, and to have total control
over the privacy aspects) the double-bind will dissipate, as mastery over your
social media is no longer against the law.

IMO law should forbid social media platforms from employing DRM altogether.
Their monetization scheme will eventually adapt and Facebook and Google's
financial situation is none of my conern.

------
wiradikusuma
I feel sorry for her and condolence for her family.

BUt, at least in my circle, there are some people who do the total _opposite_.
That is, they keeeeep complaining about their life/boss/politics/etc but
actually they're a nice person and totally normal in real life.

------
intellix
There are forums specially designed for people with mental health problems: no
link in the article?

~~~
oneiric
[http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org](http://suicidepreventionlifeline.org)

[https://afsp.org](https://afsp.org)
[http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org](http://www.madisonholleranfoundation.org)

