The Fight Against Depression

    It is no secret the creation of the internet has made a lasting impact on our lives and the future generations but a growing trend is rising from the internet and its prevalence within Tumblr is growing.

Here is an article on the latest trend among our community, the article discusses teens are exposed to content that glorifies depression and teens are often expressing themselves with the use of negative imagery and falling into depression

This is a research study from the University School of Medicine located in St Louis, Missouri. This study observed and collected data from a handful of posts under the “Depression, Self-Harm, and Suicide” topic. It was found that the majority of the posts displayed depression-related content and displays negative behavior such as self-harm and suicide

In this article it discusses the user age demographics of the 34 million recorded that use Tumblr on a monthly basis. The article also discusses the biggest demographic for other major social media platforms such as twitter or Facebook. 

In this article it talked about what Tumblr was as a space for micro-blogging. It was found that Tumblr has a more rich micro-blogging environment and can help explain how widespread this problem is on Tumblr. It exposes the micro-blogging nature on Tumlbr and how it associates with its biggest demographic; teens.

This is a great website if you are curious on what depression really is. The website is run by the national institute of mental health and they classified depression as a group of illnesses than one mental illness.It also talks about common symptoms and treatments for depression. Depression affects a plethora of people but depression doesn’t always have to linger. 

In this article it discusses the real world effects of the digital world. It was noted in the article that people who use seven different social media sites or more had a three times higher likely of developing depression. The use of multiple social media sites also was linked to multi-tasking, and multi-tasking was linked to poorer attention spans, cognition and moods. Cyberbullying was also mentioned and its also good to learn from the article that a persons overall experience has a direct affect on the persons mental health. This article can possibly sum up why the glorified depression page worked, teens overall experience was changed when a constant flow of imagery depicting self-harm or suicide.

This trend should be considered a major concern for teens because teens are still developing their brains and going through hormonal changes causes mood swings and other emotional issues but with this trend could boost this negative effect on teens.

The internet has abundant amounts of communities within itself and the real question is what purpose do you have on using the internet? We should focus on building communities that support others through their battles of depression and possibly other mental illness they might develop in their life.