Confession Culture: Is trauma being traded for clicks?

S ocial media has become a platform for sharing information and advice amongst strangers, often regarding sensitive topics and experiences. This has been a great way to make people feel less alienated and destigmatise personal trauma and mental health, but its downsides are evident.

This phenomenon has increased since the Covid pandemic, when everyone felt increasingly isolated during endless quarantines. During this period, diagnoses, support and therapy were less available to young people. TikTok was able to fill this support system vacuum, with infinite videos, comments and trends about traumatic experiences or mental illnesses. Strains on health services have also pushed people to seek support and information about trauma online.

Trends such as the ‘trauma salad candy’ on TikTok involve people taking it in turns, sharing traumatic experiences whilst pouring chocolate and sweets into a container. Some of these videos have accumulated more than 2 million likes, with TikTok influencers like Ami Charlize and Joseph Baggs, who post content from ‘get ready with me’ to podcasts featuring other celebrity influencers participating. The traumatic stories shared during these kinds of trends can appear entertaining or comical. However, they can also be deemed as trauma dumping and can be triggering for certain viewers. Alternatively, there can be hateful comments or claims of lying, which can distress the creator.

There are also more morbid ‘trends’ on TikTok including ‘pro-ana’ (pro-anorexia) videos encouraging viewers to lose weight, ‘exchanging advice and challenging one another’. Although TikTok has tried to take these videos down, it is concerning that users were creating them in the first place.

Motivations for sharing personal trauma online can include spreading awareness of disorders or how to access help, which in turn can have massively beneficial effects on people feeling isolated and alienated due to their suffering. It can also help establish accountability for perpetrators of traumatic crimes, as seen in influencer Kayla Malecc’s brave exposure of her ex-boyfriend’s abusive behaviour, through photos and videos of the state of their home and herself after his abuse, as well as a YouTube video explaining the traumatic domestic abuse she suffered. By making the internet a more open space to share stories of trauma, advice can be given to people who might not be aware they need it, or don’t know where to get it.

The downsides to sharing trauma online are perhaps the normalisation or trivialisation of disorders and traumatic experiences, which has led to a culture of self-diagnosis amongst young people. More than half of all the top trending videos offering mental health advice on TikTok contain misinformation. This is not surprising as solutions or diagnosis to complex mental disorders cannot be explained in a 15-to-30-second clip. Relying on unlicensed and unofficial advice from self-proclaimed therapists online can also lead to dangerous activities or trivialise the experiences of people living with serious mental illnesses.

It is this obsession with virality that leads to people viewing and presenting mental health and trauma as a competition

The monetisation aspect of social media enhances the dangers of sharing personal trauma online. The more views and likes a video receives, the more money a creator makes, pushing users to post increasingly extreme and captivating content. Alix Woolard from The Conversation suggests that “because TikTok’s algorithm is based on attention, it’s not uncommon for highly emotional stories to gather traction and go viral.” It is this obsession with virality that leads to people viewing and presenting mental health and trauma as a competition, much like the eating disorder culture on Tumblr in the 2010s, where influencers and celebrities, like Ariana Grande, would post pictures of themselves in small spaces or romanticise Nabokov’s Lolita. Alternatively, users may feel pressured to overshare private information for views and money.

At the end of the day, people are free to post whatever content they want, and sometimes sensitive content about trauma and therapy can be educational or helpful for both the viewers and the creator. Yet, influencers, in particular, have a duty to consider the impact of their content, especially considering their access to and the impressionability of younger audiences. Perhaps greater access to and education on mental health services, as well as trauma prevention, can encourage people to direct their attention to real-life support systems instead of online worlds.