To What Extent Does the Media Contribute to Depression?

This is the @ecoTrain question of the week. For those who may be new to me and my posts, depression is a topic near and dear to my heart. I have my own battle with it, as do several members of my family. What causes depression is surely something we’d all love to know. Yet it’s a topic tangled up in taboo, shame, unrealistic expectations, and mystery.

I would guess a majority of people still don’t understand the difference between sadness and depression. Even for those of us dealing with depression, it can be hard to tell. One can slip to the other quickly. Depression can also come straight out of the middle of nowhere. Life can be moving along swimmingly while the depressed person drifts in a fog of shadows and heavy weights. Sometimes depression doesn’t have anything to do with anything external. Some chemical change drifts in, for me I believe pregnancy was the trigger, and suddenly the whole world is shrouded in shit.

So, in that case, I don’t think the media is playing any role. Sometimes, though, depression is exacerbated by situations. It starts as sadness. And it slips at some point into depression. In these cases, the external world can have an influence. Of course in a clear state of mind, we can choose how to see any situation. In a clear mind we can see solutions, and, indeed, that is how we progress through the issues our societies face. In depression it is simply overwhelming. It can drift in from personal relationship issues or the chaos of awfulness in the world or the way we feel about ourselves.

In two of those three cases, I see some form of the media playing a role. I think it’s useful to distinguish the different types of media for this conversation. We have news, pop culture (including tv, movies, music, and advertising), and social media. At this point social media has nearly taken over all three. It is now news, pop culture, and social interaction. I am not one that blames technology for every problem we have. I don’t think social media is making teenagers into horrible people. I cringe when people talk, often on social media, about what a tragedy it is for children to be exposed to screens.

Social media is not really the problem. People saying hateful things on social media is the problem. I suppose there is something to be said for how emboldened people are by anonymity, but an asshole is an asshole. Perhaps they are nastier hidden by the screen, but generally either you think it’s ok to be hateful or you don’t. And that point actually brings me to the news media. For the moment let’s ignore that the news media is a big corporate whore mouthpiece and that they only report news that serves the interests of large corporations and the ultra elite. The thing that disturbs me nearly as much as their total inability to do their job is how hateful they are. I remember the first time I heard Rush. I was absolutely shocked. Then FOX came on, and I was totally floored. They were rude, disrespectful, and downright spiteful. I actually refused to watch for a long time, but when the documentary came out, I decided to watch. One of the clips they show is O’Reilly yelling at the son of a 9/11 victim because he opposed war as a response to the attack. The guy was in his late teens or early 20’s, and O’Reilly yelled at him until he cried. I was horrified. This normalization of hatred and meanness is, I think, very problematic, particularly for many people facing depression because we tend to be very sensitive. The average person on social media has simply come to see this behavior as normal, and that’s definitely a problem. Marginalized populations are particularly threatened in this environment.

On top of this, the news is full of the darkness in the world. That’s really all that is reported, and the media seems quite hellbent on beating the drums of war by convincing everyone that everyone else is out to get them. They feed the fires of suspicion and anger because they seem to live for conflict and dirty laundry. That’s certainly depressing, especially when you start to realize it’s so carefully constructed. Still, as I said above, it’s not enough to send someone into a depression unless they’re already predisposed to depression.

Popular culture is pretty intimately tied to social media. Music, tv, and movies are spread through social media, and there’s a lot of advertising in there as well. All these things are part of creating and reinforcing unhealthy body images and the shaming and lack of representation of poor people and other marginalized communities. Absence can be as damaging as unhelpful messages. Again I don’t think this leads straight to depression. I was always pretty immune to these types of things, and my children are the same. Our depression has come in through different avenues. Certainly I understand it has a stronger impact on some people that deal with depression.

Like a lot of the @ecotrain questions, there’s not a clear cut answer. In the end, there’s certainly a lot of things in the world that make people feel sad. There’s a lot of meanness and suffering. That can be very difficult to deal with when depressed. I have experienced that enhancing the desire to crawl into a hole and die. It can make it harder to come out of the depression. Feeling bad about yourself as the result of teasing and shaming and not feeling like enough can be even harder. In the end, though, I really don’t think any of that can cause depression. I think it can trigger it for those who are susceptible. I think it can make it worse. I certainly know it can make it harder to get out of the depression. I don’t think it can cause it. A chemical shift is what distinguishes sadness from depression, and that’s one thing the media can’t manipulate.

As always, all pics are mine or pixabay unless otherwise noted.

I’m a passenger on the @ecotrain, as well as a member of @teamgirlpowa and @steemmamas. All three are worth taking a look at, and all three are on discord.