“A series of little high fives”: mental health and digital habituation in women’s Instagram practices

ABSTRACT

Headlines about the negative impact of Instagram on women’s mental health abound in public conversations. Yet, in a neoliberal context of limited care services and gendered pressures to “control” one’s emotions, many women are also turning to Instagram for dealing with the disabling effects of mental illness. Looking at how women use Instagram for creating and finding resources, this article complicates the general assumption that “bad” social media habits maintain psychological status quo. It considers, instead, the complex role that digital habits play in women’s experience of mental illness. Making a feminist media studies intervention into the study of mediated care, it argues that women's use of Instagram for mental health shapes their experience of mental illness through what the author calls digital habituation. The article focuses on the stories of three women—collected through in-depth interviews and media go-alongs – to demonstrate that however contradictory their digital habits may be, at times participating in postfeminist self-regulation, they simultaneously provide soothing affects. While popular discourses around gender, social media, and mental illness are tainted with moral panic, digital habituation offers a capacious framework for considering the potential and limits of using social media for women’s health.

KEYWORDS:

• Instagram
• mental illness
• habit
• care
• postfeminism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture doctoral scholarship, and Concordia University.

Notes on contributors

Fanny Gravel-Patry

Fanny Gravel-Patry (she/her) is a PhD candidate and lecturer in Concordia University’s communication studies department. Her research focuses on mental illness, media practices of care, and digital visual culture. Fanny’s dissertation looks at the Instagram practices of women living with mental illness and their use of the app as a tool for care. Her work has been published by Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, and she has written for The Conversation Canada and The Montreal Gazette. Her doctoral research is supported by Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) and Concordia University. E-mail: [email protected].