VENTING on social media

okay so i’ve been thinking about this quite a bit and i need to know if it’s just me (tw)

the other day i opened my phone to hundreds of notifications of my friend sending me instagram reels, and when i watched them all of them (minus one or two) were about sensitive topics, like talking about suicide, depression and some other things. now i’m  not fully against venting, i sometimes vent a little to my friends (with full permission), because some of them offer advice that helps my situation. however, all of these videos were completely uncalled for and i was not prepared to have to deal with all of that. my friend doesn’t have very good mental health, and i usually encourage them to get help, or talk to me when they can, but i don’t like it when they randomly vent without permission and it makes me feel extremely overwhelmed.

i feel like social media isn’t the best place for venting, and a lot of people that constantly post videos and things about it are just digging themself into a deeper hole and it won’t make their situation any better, if anything it’d make it worse for themself and others. social media isn’t “therapy” and won’t help.

and for the people that share these videos, i don’t really understand why, sending your friend a tiktok about why your life is so bad won’t make it any better. you don’t gain anything and neither does the person receiving it.

not to mention the normalisation of bad mental health, someone can say something like “y’all imma kms tonight” and instead of others saying things like “please don’t, is there anything i can do to help?”, they would usually say “real”, ”true”, ”omg same!”. i get some people use joking as a coping mechanism but i feel like it gets to the point where it’s just extremely normalised to have bad mental health, and in some cases makes you more popular (faking mental disorders ect)

now this isn’t me saying people can’t be mentally ill, i myself have been going through that, but i’ve distanced myself from things that make it worse and i’ve been trying to get better, by going to therapy, talking more to my friends, picking up hobbies ect. i’ve found that venting online and complaining about my life on the internet does not help me whatsoever and i’ve instead found better coping mechanisms.

if you disagree with me, please be nice about it, i understand if you have a different opinion about it, everyone has opinions, but instead of arguing about it i’d rather hear your point of view so i can maybe understand a bit more.