Social Media and Young People's Mental Health

Debate between Alan Meale and Stuart Blair Donaldson

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stuart Blair Donaldson]

rose—

[Sir Alan Meale (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call Stuart Blair Donaldson, let me just tell you why you are being called last: because you intervened earlier and took some time. Do not think that your being new to the House goes against you in any way. You now have your four minutes.

[Stuart Blair Donaldson (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Alan. As has been mentioned today, I speak as the youngest male MP and as someone who has grown up with social media—a digital native. I also speak as a vice-chair of the all-party group on body image and as someone with my own hashtag on Instagram—#instaMP, if anyone is interested.

I thank everyone who got in touch with me to share their stories and experiences of mental health and social media, particularly Vicky Kerr, who shared her dissertation on the subject. Social media can be a great tool in many ways, but platforms such as Instagram often portray a rose-tinted picture of a person’s life and can promote the idea of self-worth based on how many “likes” a picture gets.

The fact that young people can readily access at any time of the day pictures of famous people sharing their seemingly perfect lives can make them question their own self-worth. Additionally, the predominance of photos of those beautiful people present young people, mainly young girls, with a skewed vision of how they should look. The people they look at often look that way because of their job—they can dedicate time to it and will often have nutritionists, personal trainers and I dare say the odd bit of Photoshop. Most young people do not have access to such facilities, and famous people often do not acknowledge that they use them.

Constant exposure to those images and basing a positive self-image on likes can lead to significant deterioration in a young person’s mental health. In extreme cases, that can lead to the development of eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa or bulimia. That might be an over-simplification of a complex and serious illness, but the idealised body images so often portrayed in both conventional and social media have an effect on people at risk of suffering from it.

Unfortunately, social media often hinder rather than help people who suffer from significant mental health issues. Young people can often get caught up in eating disorder promotion on social media. Hashtags such as #thinspiration and #skipdinnerwakeupthinner allow people to connect and share tips on how to lose weight, purge and starve themselves. That makes the problems more severe and can have severe and tragic consequences. I have witnessed the devastating effects that losing a daughter to an eating disorder can have on a family, which is why I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate and raise awareness—I wish I had more time to speak.

As a society, we could do a lot more to promote healthy body image and to talk about and be more open about our mental health, whatever age we are. I will leave Members with a quotation:

“The quickest way to get a bikini body is to put a bikini on”.

[Sir Alan Meale (in the Chair)]

Mr Donaldson, everybody gets worried and wants more time. Don’t worry about it.