Young people, social media and the ethics gap

Young people, social media and the ethics gap

by | Feb 21, 2016 | Digital, social media | 0 comments

“Adults ruined Facebook. Don’t do the same with Instagram. And don’t you DARE go anywhere near Snapchat!” This was the anguished cry of my teenager during a treasured moment of increasingly elusive mother/daughter conversation. Her plea reflects a wider shift in online teenager behaviour away from more public social networks towards more private ones such as Snapchat. As Facebook becomes more domesticated amongst adults, it appears that teenagers are heading to their own more private and separate spaces. The very idea that I might set up a Snapchat account was enough to fill my teenager with abject horror. So back to our conversation. I was secretly keen to check out ideas considered in Disconnected – Youth, New Media and the Ethics Gap (Carrie James, 2014) which I have just finished reading. The author considers how young people address ethical issues and moral dilemmas relating to privacy, property and participation online. Based on numerous interviews with young people aged 10 to 25 she found positive examples of highly ethical behaviour that evinced a ‘play nice’ mindset and which respected the privacy of others. However, she also found thoughtless, dismissive and occasionally callous behaviours towards others. Not surprisingly for young people who are still developing their sense of identity, attitudes were often highly individualistic and tended to focus predominantly on consequences of antisocial behaviour for the self rather than for others: Self-centred stances are not surprising given that egocentrism often characterises the adolescent and emerging adult phases of development. However, the dominance of egocentric thinking is problematic online, given the deeply social nature of the Internet and the qualities and opportunities...
Curating mental health content online – what do you think?

Curating mental health content online – what do you think?

by | Aug 9, 2014 | activism, mental health, social media | 5 comments

Last night I took part in a conversation with @markoneinfour @psycle_doc @MHnurselecturer and @PsychorBust about curating mental health content online. You can find a storify of our conversation here. It came about as a result of Mark posting a blog about the demise of One in Four magazine with reflections on what had worked and what hadn’t. You can read his post here. My PhD research has primarily focused on the now sadly departed The World of Mentalists (TWOM) blog which curated blogs and tweets from around the madosphere on a weekly basis – the nearest thing I’ve found to regular curation of personal/unofficial conversations about mental health. TWOM ran its course and is testament to the ephemeral nature of content online – things come and go, work for a while, and then no longer work. What I loved about TWOM was the fact that it was curated in a highly participatory way (guest curators each week), with many different perspectives, and shared fascinating blogs that I probably wouldn’t have come across any other way. It was also outside the boundaries or official or institutional conversations. There are all sorts of different types of mental health content online, from blogs through to historical websites through to Wikipedia pages and Twitter chats. And no doubt lots more. Is it desirable to find a way of curating this content and, if so, what would be the best way of doing it? Lots of questions to which I don’t have the answers but I’d be very interested in extending the conversation further and knowing what other people...
What’s social media got to do with mental health stigma?

What’s social media got to do with mental health stigma?

by | Feb 26, 2012 | mental health | 4 comments

I’ve been reading some of the literature on mental health stigma and thinking about the role social media can play in influencing attitudes and behaviours. Checking out the Time to Change campaign, which had 93,996 fans on Facebook and 13,865 followers on Twitter when I last checked, it is clear that social media is increasingly part of the mix. Just to give you an example of how messages/ideas can go viral on social media, when actress Rebecca Front tweeted: “Hey well known Twitterers. Fancy taking the stigma out of mental illness? I’ll start: I’m Rebecca Front & I’ve had panic attacks. #whatstigma” she got mental health hitting the top trending list. You can find out more about it it here . Here are a few of my initial ponderings about the role of social media as a platform for challenging stigma… Have you ever talked to someone about mental health? – Time to Change’s strap line is ‘it’s time to talk’ and this is based on research that getting people talking about mental health increases understanding. Face-to-face contact is the most effective way to positively influence discriminatory attitudes. However, it appears that contact has to be on an equal footing to be effective. Social media is a great equaliser. Twitter only allows you 140 characters whatever your status or income. I’m interested in the extent to which this sort of virtual contact may replicate direct contact. My friend’s ok with this so why shouldn’t I be? – I’ve seen quite a bit out there recently about the value of online trust – people trusting the people they follow more than they...