Content area
Full text
A marked increase in the use of social media put a large number of people at risk of feeling lonely, depressed, and anxious. Ordinary people, influencers and therapists have become mental health advocates with instant messaging, quick posts, uplifting thoughts and advice for their followers. The information presented may leave viewers feeling further traumatized or confused. The rationale behind studying this topic was to study the impact of fake influencers on social media on mental health of adults in the context of India. This study tries to focus on the gaps in the literature available on the topic and tries to find the impacts, and effective ways to identify and tackle this quackery. The methodology used was a qualitative analysis of primary data gathered from online semi-structured interviews. Interviews of two mental health professionals and three people from the field of tarot card reading, graphology and online counselling with a short diploma course for therapy and counselling were taken. In addition, a book titled 'Shamans, Mystics and Doctors- A Psychological Inquiry into India and Its Healing Traditions' by Sudhir Kakar was taken as secondary data. The results identify the causes of growth in pseudoscientific practices, analyses the impact and provide recommendations to tackle the same. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and broader implications. This is a qualitative study and thus has individual opinions and thought processes about the topic. It may be ridden with systematic biases, even though it's important to study it.
Keywords: online therapy, social media, mental health, quackery, pseudoscience
The use of social media has significantly increased in recent years. Researchers are now pondering the long-term negative effects of social media use. People are becoming more and more dependent on social media on a global scale. This has led to new difficulties. A great number of people are in danger of feeling lonely, depressed, and nervous as a result of the increased usage of social media. Extensive research on young adults in the United States discovered that light users of social media are three times more likely than heavy users to have depressive symptoms (Lin & Sidani, 2016).
Social media can make you feel inappropriate about your health and appearance. Even if you know that the image you see online...