A study on thyself. Hello Chàe readers. How does the content you’re consuming daily online effect your mental health and stability?
It’s easy to click on a video online and fall into a rabbit hole of similar content without realising the effects it has on you, that's exactly why I want to take an auto-ethnographic study on myself and the content I’m consuming.
What is ethnography? Google defines it as “the scientific description of peoples and cultures with their customs, habits, and mutual differences.” Ethnography is the qualitative study to discover what particular people find relevant. It is about the context, rather than the text. An auto-ethnography study is when the ethnographer takes a research on themselves. Which is what I’ve begun to do. How I decided to take this study is by viewing a few videos a week and forcing myself to log my feelings, and see how they are or aren’t altered by the videos I’m watching and the pictures I’m seeing. I did this over the course of three weeks.
The ethical issue at hand is how influencers create a false reality of mental health and a fake perception of constantly appearing happy - forcing viewers to feel that way as well. Or even creating a fake persona or life online that eventually makes viewers feel they are less than they are.
The first week I watched three "Lifestyle" videos on YouTube from different influencers in this Lifestyle category - McKenzie Luskey, Summer Mckeen and Rachel Catherine. I wanted to explore more of the lifestyle YouTuber's available to me and I focused on “a day in the life” videos to see how it would make me feel afterwards.
Watching people have their productive days out and about whilst I sat there watching did bum me out. Feeling as if I was wasting away and not using my day productively like they were. The first two I watched were from influencers who were around my age doing online university as I am. Seeing the different routines and how they contrasted with mine did make me feel like I should be doing more with my time instead. It made me feel like I am just doing the bare minimum to survive. But also I think it’s important to note through the pandemic I had already been feeling sluggish and unmotivated to be creative and focused which is unusual for me. So, it did kind of feel like I was rubbing salt in my own wounds watching people in a similar lifestyle to me, be doing more.
The last video I watched was different from the first two, as she is an Australian influencer, with a smaller following. She has graduated from university, so she's out in the "real world" following her university experience. Seeing her doing the most with her day while full time working, weirdly enough gave me more motivation than the first two. But she didn't present anything different from them. Maybe it's the fact that she's "ahead" in life because she is already graduating which makes me feel like I have something to strive for too? And the first two are in the same walk of life as me, so I feel more threatened? I'm not sure. But it is interesting to note the two changes of my mindset while watching "a day in the life" videos that week.
What’s your take? I think it’s interesting that the moment I started to consciously record my feelings, I could see that there was an actual change happening in my mental state from watching these videos, how could something like the action of sitting down and clicking three videos take such a toll on my well being. Next time you watch a lifestyle video, note how it affects you. Did you just passingly watch it, did you envy the way it made you reflect on your own life, or were you proud of that Influencer for the life they are living and the goals they’re reaching? Let me know!
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