Critical Analysis Draft PDF

Preview

Summary

Critical analysis on the book...

Description

Sophia Channan Professor Williams Univ 200 June 6, 2020 Suicide Watch Social Media and Mental Health

Social Media is a great platform in our young generation and even older generations for many different reasons such as expressing opinions, sharing your life, promoting businesses, making new connections, or even helping others, but sometimes these things are taken advantage of in a bad way. With all the freedom social media allows us to have, it leaves an open space for criticism and hatred towards others. The media also puts a variety of labels and stigmas on to different mental illnesses by praising some, and degrading others. Some people don’t want to believe that there is a dark side to the media, but little did you know that this can increase mental health issues or even create them, especially in our adolescents. According to (HealthGuide), “Multiple studies have found a strong link between heavy social media and an increased risk for depression, anxiety, loneliness, self harm, and even suicidal thoughts.” Some factors from social media that can cause this are ideas such as comparing numbers of followers, likes, and comments, comparing your mental disorder to other one’s seen on your feed, and the idea of how social media can lead ones to attempt suicide acts. In the story Suicide Watch by Nafissa Thompson-Spires, Jilly is a young black girl who struggles with her mental health and contemplates about committing a suicide act. She frequently sees a therapist but it doesn’t seem to help her feel better about herself. My main claim is about how social media relates to her mental health especially through comparing herself to others. She finds herself criticizing herself through her numbers on Facebook and Twitter by thinking her

followers and likes are not good enough. She also compares her narcissism disorder to other disorders she sees on her feed. All of the comparisons she encounters on social media have lead her closer and closer to attempting suicide. It is common among teens to compare themselves to others on the media especially when it comes to comparing numbers. Jilly is one of those teens who pays close attention and obsesses over the amount of followers and likes she has on her Facebook and Twitter pages. In this story she comes to admit, “She had 1,672 Facebook friends and 997 Twitter followers and she collected them like so many merit badges.” (Thompson-Spires) Jilly refers to her followers as badges that she collects which means she is eager to collect more and more. This leaves Jilly unsatisfied with her number of likes and followers so she stresses herself that she needs to get more. “Jilly determined to wait at least four hours before checking the status of her farewell post so she wouldn’t look desperate, but then she remembered that she didn’t have long left, so she waited five minutes and checked her phone.” (Thompson-Spires) Jilly is so sucked into her Facebook and Twitter accounts that she pays close attention to the time she goes to checks her likes and comments. This is very known for our generation and without even noticing, it affects our mentality and creates an obsession and a feeling that we aren’t good enough. Jilly is diagnosed with narcissism by her therapist but she feels embarrassed to let that be known and she would rather be “depressed”. “If she mentioned it often enough, without saying why she went, people could fill in a sexier disease than narcissism, which you couldn’t exactly tell anyone you had, because it made you look bad, and she didn’t even have a malignant kind or the official personality disorder…”(Thompson-Spires) Social media made Jilly feel like her disorder was not good enough or it didn’t match the idea of a mental disorder. She felt like narcissism had such a bad stigma to it that related people to being “psychotic” or “crazy,” which she took personally.

She feels quite positive that she has depression because of the suicidal thoughts she has been having and also seeing her friends take them so she spoke with her therapist about it and she said, “No, Jilly, I’m still not that kind of doctor. And you aren’t depressed, just narcissistic, and there are so far no medications for that.” (Thompson-Spires) The way Jilly’s therapist responds to her is not what she expected but maybe this justification from her therapist helps to show Jilly that social media is influencing her to think a different way and distract her from her true self. No one knows the real cause of her mental illness and what is making her want to attempt suicide. Throughout this story she comes up with different ways to do her act such as popping pills, razor cuts, knife cuts, starvation, but she ends up second guessing all of these ideas. “Pills might not work the first time.” (Thompson-Spires) This is an example of Jilly re-evaluating committing suicide which she comes to a lot of realizations throughout the story. Although she battles with self love and her mental health, something is always holding her back from taking her life away. Jilly starts to think about her friend Carl and how he took his own life away. “One of her friends-not online, but her real friend- Carl from eleventh grade art club, at Eisenhower High School, had even died...Jilly shivered, thinking about Carl and in the closed casket, and his mom’s eyes, glassy yet hollow...She heard people, including Carl’s sister, say that suicide was the ultimate act of selfishness, that in everyone else behind to clean up the mess.” (ThompsonSpires) As Jilly starts to trace back to her friend Carl, she starts to think about how her mother would feel and how heartbroken she would be, and how much pain she will put others through. As she comes to this realization, she decides she doesn’t want to commit this act or selfishness, and that she wants to continue her life forward. Jilly has been struggling with her mental health for a while and there is no direct reason to how it all began. Since she has been diagnosed with a minor case of narcissism, did that lead to her

feeling alone and depressed? Or had it been her selfishness that led her to wanting to take her own life. Mental illness never has a specific cause and it is usually built up from previous traumas in your life. Jilly mentions in this story, “...was that there was no backstory. Nothing exciting or terrible had ever happened to her, and if there was any oppression for her to overcome, it only grazed her but never lingered.” (Thompson-Spires) She tries to think back in her past to see what has caused her poor mental health and all she remembers is being followed by two women before because of her race, but that was the only racism she has ever come across. She felt ashamed to feel this way and she did not know why she felt so alone. She thought she lived a pretty normal and decent life where she had no reason to be complaining. This is a common theme in today’s society and many wonder what has caused them to feel stressed, down, alone, or worthless, and this all can lead back to our social media use. Constantly checking our numbers and thinking it’s not good enough is mentally draining and can affect our self esteem and we will never be satisfied with it. The amount of assumptions about mental health disorders that are laid out on social media can give wrong impressions to people and make others feel insecure about themselves. There is so much negativity in the media world that we don’t realize it has a big effect on us. As Jilly has done in this story “Suicide Watch”, it is important to reflect on your life and ask yourself what is making me sad. She helped herself by realizing there is so much more to life and ending it is never a good option. Social media plays a big factor towards poor mental health and it is important to know that being sucked into it is unhealthy and it is good to have a break.

Works Cited

Social Media and Mental Health. (2020, May 5). Retrieved from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm

Thompson-Spires, Nafissa. “Suicide Watch.” Dissent, Volume 65, Spring 2018, pp 73-79,

Retrieved from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/692139...