Hello!
It’s 1st March I know… I have a very good reason, however for the slight delay in February’s blog- an ankle that has a small avulsion fracture, and ligament damage in it…
I began this one over a week ago, with the intention of posting it last Saturday after Trampolining. However, trampolining training happened, I landed on the frame, my ankle turned and I spent the next 3 hours in the Walk In Centre (excuse the pun..). This blog naturally took a back step and I have only just got to finshing it off and getting it up!
With recent events weighing heavily on mine, and I’m sure everyone else’s minds I thought it only right that this month, the focus of the blog should be on Mental Health; a topic so very important, with social media having largely taken over, and people being able to talk freely about whatever and whomever they like, without seemingly any repercussions. Behind a keyboard and the pages of a magazine you can be whoever and whatever you like, and sometimes I think that is definitely not a good thing.
Every day we see in the media a new story emerging telling us about how a celebrity has put on/lost too much weight, and looks awful, or how their other half is distraught because said celebrity has supposedly been spotted looking ‘cosy’ with another person. It has become so common for us, in the age of social media and gossip magazines, to expect pictures like this to pop up everywhere, filling people’s timelines and brains with a distorted version of the lives of the people who are on our TVs, and in the public eye.
Conclusions can be easily drawn about the people we see every day on various screens and sometimes, we make snap judgements on what sort of person they must be; I know I have done. It is so very easy to write your opinion, about something, we actually know very little about, from behind a screen without thinking of the consequences for the very real person sitting on the other side, reading comment after comment about a situation that nobody but them, and the other parties involved know the truth about. I cannot imagine a life, where my private life is no longer my own and everything I do and say is splashed across the papers, and internet, for everyone to read about and comment.
It is no surprise then that mental health issues are becoming more prevalent, whether that’s because more awareness is being raised, or whether there has actually been a rise, it is alarming all the same. Events surrounding Caroline Flack and her untimely, tragic death is just a reminder of what the online world and media have really become; toxic.
Change really does need to happen and soon. Young people every day are exposed to images and stories that are so far from reality yet are being portrayed to be exactly that. As a teacher I see first-hand how social media can have a huge effect on young minds, and how reality can so easily be distorted. People only post what they want people to see, the happiest people online could be hiding so much off of it. Technology is a wonderful thing when used appropriately and carefully. It is a useful tool for information and keeping in touch with the world. However, I cannot help but feel for the good of our mental health and the younger, more impressionable minds. More should be done to police the images children, and young adults… everyone, are exposed to everyday and the stories that are sold for thousands, if not millions of pounds about the personal lives of celebrities that we have absolutely no business knowing about. People hiding behind the ‘freedom of speech’ line when trolling and commenting on said lives are part of the problem and more should be done to stamp this out. Mental Health is on the line here, and unless something is done very soon, Caroline Flack will be one of the first (as I’m sure this has contributed to others before her) out of many more we will see, lost to a world who could only see her in the way the papers and social media portrayed her!
Wow… another muddle, but we’re done. I’m now fighting my own battle in that I’ve a fractured ankle and therefore cannot exercise for at least 6 weeks, if not longer. Trampolining and Running out of the picture until then, so time to find something else to occupy my mind until then!
Have a good March! Go check on your friends, have a chat and keep in touch. To quote a line that has been floating around for a while now: In a world where you can be anything, Be Kind!
See you next month!
Sinead xx
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