Social media culture damaging youth's mental health

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Social media culture damaging youth's mental health

CULTURAL pressures on young people have created a mental health powder keg that could destroy a generation’s hope, according to author Matthew Todd.

Social media has created an obsession with image and wealth while celebrities such as reality TV star Kim Kardashian West create a template few can live up to.

Yet Government support for young people is “creaking at the seams and not fit for purpose”.

Mr Todd says: “We have lost sight of what is important and need to find space to value each other.

“There has been a Facebook-isation of life leading to a ‘look at me’ culture.

Society seems to have become very individualistic with people obsessing about Me and I rather than supporting one another.

“We seem to have become very selfish and angry.

You see it in road rage and the way people scream at their kids in supermarkets.

Services for young people are being cut just when they are needed more than ever, which is irresponsible. We are sitting on a powder keg because of the amount of stress young people have to live with.

“The internet has created a very visual culture with huge emphasis on how you look and an obsession with celebrities.

There have always been rich people but now we see them and their lifestyles all the time, and if you feel you can’t achieve what they do then the pressure mounts.”

Mr Todd, 42, former editor of Attitude magazine, has written an honest and perceptive book on his personal struggles and the multiple pressures affecting young gay people growing up in the UK.

Straight Jacket, How To Be Gay And Happy, is in its second print run only a month after publication and has been described by Sir Elton John as “essential reading for every gay person on the planet”.

Mr Todd says: “I want the book to spark discussion among gay and straight people about what is working and what is not.

Many people grow up feeling isolated and some of us come out of it OK but many are traumatised and often we can take it out on one another.”

He believes the lack of openness when addressing mental health is blighting young people’s future and leaving some open to despair, drink and drug addiction, prison and, in too many cases, suicide.

“There needs to be more mainstream discussion and sex education in schools.

We need to grow up and talk appropriately about relationships,” he says.

“It is not about promoting sex. If anything, it’s the opposite – its about empowering kids to respect themselves and each other.

“Parents to a large degree have their heads in the sand about what is available online – the violence, extreme sexual content, pornography which kids can access on phones and computers – so it is even more important to teach them about what is appropriate in a relationship.”

 

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/699789/Celebrity-social-media-culture-youth-teenager-mental-health-selfie