Last week, I watched a TikTok where a girl confidently “diagnosed” herself with obsessive-compulsive disorder because she liked to keep her room clean and organized. When I opened the comments section, I found it filled with people relating because they liked to color-code their pens, too. Videos like this one aren’t uncommon: They’re repeatedly created by social media influencers who misrepresent mental illness.

When these disorders are portrayed as jokes or personality quirks, they start to lose their meaning. When millions of people are casually diagnosing themselves, it becomes harder for people who actually have these conditions to be taken seriously. Instead of building genuine understanding, the portrayal of mental illness as a joke on social media further trivializes it and makes it harder to be taken seriously.

Mental health on social media has become a gravity-defying internet trend, legitimizing a misinformed community of discourse. “#trauma” on TikTok has over 3.9 millions posts, with the most popular posts averaging around 4.6 million shares. And while social media does deserve recognition for creating a space where previously taboo topics can be discussed freely, there are consequences to making mental illness so mainstream. 

For example, when serious terminology becomes a part of casual conversation, the language used to describe these once heavy topics changes. Language plays a large role in perception: When everyday speech overuses terms that should be reserved for clinical diagnoses, these diagnoses stop sounding serious. A difficult midterm becomes “traumatizing,” someone being overly clean becomes “so OCD,” and having trouble paying attention in class is because of “ADHD.” This can end up seriously hurting those who actually live with these disorders: When everyone claims that they are “depressed,” therapists and other professionals become desensitized to these terms — making it easier for real symptoms to be overlooked. 

Normalizing clinical terms poses larger risks to those who are genuinely struggling with debilitating disorders. For these people, using these buzzwords perpetuates a boy-who-cried-wolf effect, which can lead to delayed diagnoses and unintentional gaslighting from mental health professionals, which overall make it harder to receive help. This watered-down language embraces a culture that treats mental illness diagnosis as a fun quirk or personality trait rather than what it actually is: a clinical disorder. 

We can’t ignore that social media has created a convenient way for people across the globe to share their experiences and stories. The community created by social networking sites can be invaluable in helping people feel less alone in their struggles. However, labeling every minor inconvenience as a disorder for the purpose of relatability creates a collective misunderstanding of how real mental illness and its consequences can be. If we want these conversations to actually have an impact, we need to start using language that reflects the severity of mental illnesses rather than turning them into trends. 

Real awareness isn’t just about numbers and engagement, but is about nuance and empathy. We need to move toward this awareness to make mental health conversations meaningful rather than misleading.