Self-diagnosing via the internet is nothing new. It seems almost second nature these days to Google physical symptoms to get a quick, digital second opinion. However, in recent years, there has also been an uptick in self-diagnosing mental health disorders through social media.

The conditions teens and young adults tend to self-diagnose include “autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), borderline personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder (DID), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Tourette syndrome, among others,” as noted by Everyday Health. TikTok and other online platforms offer a sense of community and a starting point for those experiencing similar mental health issues, but it’s worth examining the other underlying factors at play here. So, what’s causing gen Zers to find solace in digital self-diagnosing?

First of all, it’s important to note that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), younger generations have experienced a steep decline in mental health as a result of the pandemic. Couple that with limited access to professional mental health resources—due to a lack of health insurance or mental health stigmatisation—and it’s easy to see why gen Z is turning to TikTok for answers.

In some cases, as explained by Doctor Akua Boateng, “mental health TikToks may be the first discussions about mental health [young people are] exposed to, especially if these topics aren’t talked about at home or school.” Conversations about mental health on social media are filling gaps in care, where traditional systems and institutions are missing the mark—however, digital diagnoses can also fall short.

As you scroll through your social media platform of choice, you may come across a video from your favourite mental health influencer listing the tell-tale signs of a narcissist, and then immediately think you’re a narcissist. While your psychological experience may align with some symptoms of a mental health disorder or illness, it doesn’t automatically mean you have it. Tristan Collazo, a licensed resident in counselling, observed that “it is human nature to sometimes relate to a disorder or disease after learning a little bit about it.”

Likewise, symptoms of disorders may overlap with typical daily human experiences—what makes these traits diagnosable depends on the way they impact one’s life and their severity. Counseling Today noted that “accurately diagnosing mental health conditions is complex, requiring years of education and training to truly understand the nuances.”

Social media mental health information is helpful in spreading awareness and reducing stigma, but it’s often created for a wide, generalised audience. If you’re able to meet one-on-one with a medical professional, you can receive guidance, and possibly a treatment plan that’s curated specifically with your lived reality in mind.

Netizens should exercise caution when self-diagnosing mental health disorders as they’re often highly nuanced—a factor the internet has a habit of flattening. That being said, there can also be a wealth of benefits that come with this digital impulse. As mentioned earlier, mental health content on social media can spread awareness of medical terminology and encourage people to have a greater understanding of their personal experiences.

Licensed professional counsellor and mental health activist Lindsay Fleming mentioned that “self-diagnosing is giving people more [of an] ability to advocate for themselves and say, ‘No, I think I have this, and this is why’.” Moreover, “it’s giving people a voice within the professional world,” whether they have access to therapy or not, the expert added. This is all supplemental to the supportive community those experiencing similar symptoms can find online in addition to or in place of traditional healthcare institutions.

Similarly, self-diagnosing has been a crucial first step for many when it comes to mental health. This opinion piece by Harvard student Anuksha S. Wickramasinghe for The Harvard Crimson, for example, outlined how her own mental health journey began because of resources she found online, and how other students have had similar experiences to hers.

Jailene Ramos, a peer of Wickramasinghe, self-diagnosed prior to receiving formal ADHD and clinical depression diagnoses. She described how she “would shove it down because [she] also felt like self-diagnosing [herself] was fake.” The road to professional diagnosing is filled with complex paperwork and financial obstacles—another student, Alyx Britton, said that “it was a couple $100” to be formally evaluated for ADHD. These steps within the medical system are difficult for those who come from low-income backgrounds or atypical home environments to navigate.

Alternatively, digital diagnoses can offer internet users clarity when they may not have the resources to receive institutionalised medical help.

Like traditional diagnosing, digital self-diagnosing should take a thoughtful, nuanced approach. Otherwise, Hannah Guy, a licensed clinical social worker and certified clinical trauma professional noted that it “can lead to receiving the wrong treatment and interventions down the line.” That being said, Guy also understands that “[h]aving a diagnosis can be extremely validating for people. [While] not meeting the criteria for a diagnosis can be just as invalidating. If you’re sad. You are sad. You don’t need to be diagnosed with depression in order for your feelings of sadness to be valid.”

With Guy’s words in mind, it could be helpful to consider that self-diagnosis offers relief, but it isn’t the end of your mental health journey. Rather, internet users can use the tools available to them to remedy some of what they’re feeling. For instance, Inna Kanevsky, a TikToker and psychology professor at San Diego Community College, explained that “generally, ADHD coping strategies can be helpful for anybody. You don’t need to label yourself to use the advice.”

So, whether you don’t have access to therapy, are beginning your mental health journey online, or are anywhere in between, you can use the resources available to help you move more smoothly throughout your day. While traditional diagnoses may be ideal for some, they aren’t always available, and that’s where social media self-diagnosing can fulfil a necessary need for young people.

The city. A noisy place where people bustling around are too glued to their phones to even look up. You probably have an image of a glorious metropolis pop up in your mind. Or maybe it’s the iconic scene of Anne Hathaway side stepping the streets of a busy New York City in The Devil Wears Prada, the Friends gang cooped up in the confines of the Central Perk coffee shop or even Carrie Bradshaw stylishly clad on the city’s concrete slabs in her Manolo Blahniks and a Dior saddlebag swinging off her shoulder. For me, it’s the array of dancing images to George Gershwin’s ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ from Disney’s Fantasia 2000. Whatever comes to your mind, there’s a newly-raised problem with it. Allow me to explain.

For decades, psychologists, philosophers, and urban planners have racked their big brains as to why urban environments could be associated with poor mental health. Many viable and well-believed ideas were brought up during this time. Big Think took note of one theory in particular that caught a lot of traction, which states that city dwellers are routinely placed in emotional states that threaten their psychological wellbeing “such as stress, isolation, and uncertainty.”

How all of these things come together to give the apathetic, listless feeling that I’m sure many of you civilians of the citadel are familiar with is not so clear. Some people make the move to the burgs for opportunity, as big cities are often the hubs of job sectors and economic mobility. Others do so to escape horrid and war-torn conditions, poverty, or abuse. And yet, rather than being the cure to all of their problems, the concrete jungle might be the cancer that needs to be cut out, having the adverse effect of making a fragile or sensitive mental state even worse.

Research accumulated by the Centre for Urban Design and Mental Health (UDMH) has seemingly confirmed the age-long suspicions: people living in cities are more susceptible to mental illness than their countryside-based counterparts.

Since 2010, documented research—such as that conducted by the Research Department at the Arkin Mental Health Institute in Amsterdam—has shown that people who live in cities are far more likely to experience mental health issues compared to those that reside in more quiet, rural areas. In fact, city individuals are almost 40 per cent more likely to suffer from depression. The same study conducted by Jap Peen, a senior researcher at Arkin, showed a 21 per cent increase in anxiety disorders, along with an increased risk of developing substance abuse disorders.

Not to mention, two separate studies both conducted in 2010 (one observed the rural and urban differences and the prevalence of schizophrenia, and the other a meta-analysis of many different studies looking into the topic) found that urban inhabitants are twice as likely to develop the mental health condition. In other words, all of you countryside dwellers and tech antis may have hit the nail on the head a long time ago since it looks like it might just be countryside-1, city-0.

This is not a new concept either. Introducing Georg Simmel, a German sociologist from the 1800s who had many opinions on why the metropolis is so harmful for its citizens. For Simmel, the city is a place of overstimulation. Think about it, how much goes on during your average commute to work? The city has a unique way of rendering people indifferent to the world around them. For example, the silence and avoidance of eye contact, that all London natives are no stranger to, is habitual to any tube journey. While relationships in smaller towns are characterised by emotions, according to Simmel, the ones made in big cities are purely economic.

Urban living certainly comes with a myriad of additional problems, and I’m aware I have only scratched the surface here. Let’s have a closer look at some of the other reasons behind big city depression.

Something about cities brings out the worst in people regardless of them being native to the concrete jungle or a newcomer with predestined trauma in tow. The world of academia has of course come up with theorisations for why this is the case—because really, why are some city people so horrible? Simmel came up with the answer to that ever-so-elusive ‘why’ and it can be found in—cue drumroll—The Metropolis and Mental Life.

Like most world thinkers, Simmel’s writing comes from his experience with the inner workings of the cruel capitalist cityscape. He grew up in the burgeoning metropolis of Berlin during what is known as ‘la Belle Époque’—a period of history between 1871 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, plagued by the uber rich’s inability to deal with the grim reality of modern life.

But Simmel did not share his contemporaries’ unwavering faith in civilisation. Though others saw society as continuously progressing and improving both scientifically and economically, the sociologist could not shake the feeling that humanity had somewhere along the road taken a wrong turn and was swerving into a messy crash.

The Metropolis and Mental Life aimed to capture the essence of Simmel’s woes—within it he compared the differences of living in a rural village to a big city and explained how different environments shape the psychology of people who live surrounded by them. His main point was simple: city dwellers, because we are overexposed to audiovisual stimuli compared to our countryside counterparts, involuntarily construct psychological walls to our surroundings, which makes life feel less worth living.

Likening the nervous system to an electrical circuit, Simmel proposed that, if overstimulated for a prolonged period, it will run dead. In the same way, the emotionally or intellectually stimulated city dwellers quickly cease to find things that excite them—everything fades into a blur. Simmel defined that feeling using the French word ‘blasé’, which can be translated to ‘jaded’ in English.

In his essay, he wrote, “The essence of the blasé attitude is an indifference toward the distinctions between things […] The value of the distinctions between things are experienced as meaningless. They appear to the blasé person in a homogeneous, flat and grey color.” How lovely.

Because of the muted existence we seem to be stuck in, Simmel also believed that it’s incredibly difficult for city residents to make intimate connections with the people they meet. Consequently, most interactions with others are brief and impersonal, which is completely different to what takes place in villages, where inhabitants are intimately familiar with each other.

And since the ones living in big cities are unable to establish meaningful relationships, in Simmel’s eyes their interactions with society become individualistic and economic—isolated rather than communal. Gone is togetherness.

Big Think writer Tim Brinkhof summarised that “the attempt to remain independent is, of course, a double-edged sword.” The cost of freedom for city dwellers is mental health and wellbeing. Dodging the psychological potholes in the city is just as difficult as avoiding the physical holes in the road.

One wrong step, and you could trip and fall into a ditch of loneliness, purposelessness, or the most troubling of all, apathy. But it’s not all that bad, right? At least we have the night tube… Oh wait, we don’t.