Just like life, Instagram carries more or less qualitative content – which is not problematic. There is also potentially dangerous content, when the topics discussed deal with physical and mental health – and this becomes problematic.
Accounts dedicated to healthy eating, physical exercise, detecting anxiety, ADHD or autism are legion.
And even if the concept looks at first sight of public interest – their effect can prove to be quite harmful, especially within a young community. When it comes to diet (I’ve written here before about the dangers of orthorexia – which is an eating disorder), one should also point to the numerous Instagram accounts dedicated to superfoods or detox juices (sometimes offering lists of symptoms to determine whether one is allergic) – accounts that may resonate with people who sometimes actually hide unconscious or disguised anorexia.
Likewise, our timelines are flooded – especially when Summer approaches – with exercise, whether at the gym, with equipment, without equipment, on a yoga mat or even against the wall of your living room. Pilates classes are popping up and usually only have Pilates in name and some pages even promise you a dream Summer body (whatever it means) in two weeks.
Whether it’s food or physical exercise, these accounts unfortunately send – under the healthy cover – the same message as that of the 1990s: the pursuit of a body that meets the almost immutable standards of beauty that are thinness, firmness and youth. The only difference today is that a woman has the right to look muscular when one had to look like a starving washboard in the 90s.
This is the first danger.
The second danger obviously lies in the fact that the majority of people who feed these dedicated pages are absolutely not health professionals and that the recommended practices can be at best ineffective, at worst harmful to the body, because the age or the physiological state specific to each person is absolutely not taken into account.
Following professional accounts, listening to your body to understand what is suitable for it in terms of diet or exercise, consulting professionals, breaking away from trends are the best reflexes we can adopt in a digital world oversaturated with content which are potentially dangerous.
When it comes to mental health, accounts dedicated to detecting anxiety, neuro-developmental disorders (mainly attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity (ADHD) and neuro-atypisms (mainly autism) are also legion.
Once again, the concept looks at first sight very commendable, since it sheds light on psychic and neuronal states which were hardly discussed before. Every day, social networks greatly contribute to the normalization and acceptance of human diversity – which is a great progress from a societal point of view. When I was young, anxiety did not exist, attention deficit disorders were not diagnosed and autism was synonymous with ultra-disabling and institutionalized neuro-divergence.
Alas, the majority of these Instagram pages are also maintained by non-professionnals. They enumerate lists of symptoms which are sometimes contradictory with other lists enumerated by other dedicated pages. Some even propose bingos, which allow you to tick boxes to detect anxiety, attention deficit disorders or autism. And as a result, self-diagnoses of anxiety, attention deficit disorders and neurodiversity are flourishing – particularly among young people.
Recognizing yourself in certain symptoms that cause pain should make it possible to seek medical advice – but that is where the shoe pinches.
Many self-diagnosed people do not take the step between self-diagnosis and diagnosis. There are sometimes good reasons for this lack of diagnosis – lack of financial means or medical desertification – but the fact remains that self-diagnosis presents the danger of uncertainty. If I believe the health professionals who are beginning to be concerned by the increasing number of young self-diagnosed patients who seek a medical advice, many of them are ultimately not affected by ADHD or autism.
Self-diagnosis also presents, and in a totally contradictory way, the danger of certainty. Some people are absolutely convinced by the validity of their self-diagnosis, stop there and cling to it without any other form of medical approach.
Following professional accounts, completing questionnaires published by university research centers and seeking medical advice seem the bare minimum if one suspects oneself suffering from anxiety, attention deficit disorder or autism.
Another danger exists. Self-diagnosed or diagnosed, some people appropriate their anxiety, ADHD or autism to the point of making it their entire personality by overfocusing on their divergence, which becomes the prism through which every thought, every action occurs. A victim mentality can sometimes even result from this.
(Let us be clear: I am only talking here about psychic and neuronal states that are not severely handicapping). It’s a shame because it’s penalizing. Being aware of a specific divergence and constantly crystallizing on this divergence are two very different postures. There is a fine line between awareness and navel-gazing, but it exists.
If I believe the advice provided by certain Instagram pages dedicated to anxiety, neuro-developmental disorders or neuro-atypicalisms:
“Can’t work? It’s normal, you have ADHD”.
(Variation: “Can’t work? It’s normal, you have anxiety”).
“Don’t feel like socializing? It’s normal, you are autistic”.
(Variation: “Can’t socialize? It’s normal, you have anxiety”).
And that’s all. And it’s short. And it’s also a bit misleading, because everyone is different since everyone is the product of their history and character.
Personally, I find that there are often a thousand more interesting things to do than sitting in front of a computer or attending meetings that could have been emails or conferences that could have been podcasts, and I rarely want to socialize beyond a chosen circle because, well let’s be honest, there are still a lot of douchebags on Earth.
Personally again, I’m probably dyslexic and probably on the autism spectrum – undiagnosed because it doesn’t cause any pain and I don’t really care – but I don’t think I’ve inflicted you one hundred texts explaining why these two mental states would be the common denominators of all that I do or all that I write. It’s possibly a part of me, not me as a whole. And that in no way explains why I neither want to work nor want to socialize, as we will have understood above.
Self-absorption cuts off any possibility of opening up oneself, of accepting oneself in its entirety, of accepting oneself in all its dimensions. I have already written here, I hate the concept of a one-dimensional person.
I fully appreciate the great impetus offered by the social networks which participate in the recognition of diversity, but I am sometimes worried by the overfocus lived by certain people on one of their states (allergy to glucose, orthorexia, sports mania, mild autism, attention, but the list is endless) to the detriment of all the other parts that make up a personality and a life. A way of life is multi-factorial and does not stem from a single element.
Self-absorption cuts off any possibility of evolution because it does not conceive that everything changes permanently, that life is in principle synonym of movement. However, society is changing every second, it is the movement that carries us all, individually and therefore collectively.
To accept that we change is to accept that our brain is endowed with plasticity and that it can heal itself, according to the experiences that we want to try, the personal work that we want to accomplish or the therapies that we want to follow.
To accept that we change is to consider that we will be a different person in a week, a month, a year, ten years.
We must probably forget the idea of a neuronal norm, understand that there is a great diversity of neurological functioning – neither typical nor atypical – and that the vast majority cause neither suffering nor problems.
It is also necessary, for some people clinging to their condition, to accept that ADHD or a neuro-atypicalism does not make them exceptional, that it does not constitute the whole of their personality – but for that it is necessary to abandon the ego and understand that everyone is already, by nature, unique.
Because, at the antipodes of self-absorption is detachment, which is quite simply the key to happiness.
Vionnet sarouel pants – YSL shirt – Vintage embroidered floral vest – Armani flat shoes – Chanel sunglasses
December 16, 2023
