Stronger Than Stigma
Media Information Literacy is a concept of understanding that media is not just a form of entertainment but also a platform for communication where various information, significant or not are exchanged. But these information from the mass media are not always in line with the truth and some are even hoaxes. While other information that are spreaded in the mass media are done to slander other people, there are also manipulation and bias happening between sites, blogs, articles and even news. But in most cases people uses media and the information they got from it to bully the person of their topic. For example the Korean star Sulli who recently died because of suicide, before the incident happened she was diagnosed with depression. She was always been cyber bullied in her social media account especially when she posts content that are labeled disturbing for a star like a video of her swollen eyes from crying. When people saw this instead of being alarmed by her actions that may be caused by mental illness, she was instead labeled as an attention seeker. This signifies that an understanding of usage and proper ethics of using media are needed where people especially literate or educated people need to asses these various information and their validity. What I mean with validity is not just the truth about a certain information but a level of critical thinking we should not stoop so low and bully others with the information at our hands.
In our generation today, media can be used as a platform for bullying. Where people have the tendency to be depressed and eventually commit suicide. Mental illness is caused by people and situations. In this time where competition is rampant and the world is in fast pacing, life becomes hard to keep up with as well as living. How much more of that certain someone who is already having a hard time is triggered of mental illness due to bullying in social media or mass media? Mass media with toxic people is like a virus and if it attacks someone, that certain someone may develop mental illness like social anxiety and depression. That if information from various media outlets as well as social media are not critically assessed gets out to the world out there, there will be someone who will take all the harsh blow caused by that information. It is no just the words we should be careful of but also simple actions like clicking and the posts we display on any forms of media needs to be thought twice and evaluated.
In line with this, I think my next step to further campaign my advocacy in mental health is to do social awareness through social media platforms especially twitter. We all know that social media is a very powerful tool that affects a person’s life be it a positive or negative effect. If people can trend hash tags about Kardashian’s and Barretto’s controversy, memes about Pacquiao and Bonggo why not use this platform to trend hashtags about mental health awareness? With this simple click, retweet and use hashtags, information will be spread throughout the world. There is a higher possibility of it seen in the public in a social media platform. And why twitter? I think twitter can be a very useful app to trend at the same time maintain the user’s anonymity so that user’s can share their life story and opinions without getting to dig about the user’s personal information to protect the user’s privacy.
Be a Butterfly, Stand Out! 