You can go anywhere today and you will always see someone who is buried deep into a mobile device of some sort.  What I have noticed is that online, people are not always the same person they are in a face-to-face interaction.  This goes beyond the idea of how one would act around friends versus how one would act around their family members.  Given a platform that is in a way anonymous, and one that has a large audience, such as Twitter, allows for a different personality to slowly begin creeping out of them.  I have noticed this in many different forms, myself included.  Circumstances were created to where I no longer wanted a personal twitter, so I created another account.  Originally what was just a platform to tell jokes and be “angsty” has turned into a full blown new person that is inside of me.  At 1.2k followers, this other personality is rather popular; more so than my personal twitter ever was; only reaching 286 followers. I am not this person, but at the same time, I am.  I have noticed such behavior amongst my friends and a long list of twitter accounts that I follow.  I believe that due to the ability to preform everything constantly, 24/7, 365 days a year allows fragmented personalities to begin emerging from the users subconscious. Especially in those who are already suffering from other forms of mental illness such as depression or anxiety.  This personality emergence could be some form of a coping mechanism.  “If I’m not myself then I don’t have to suffer.”  Many people falsely believe that multiple personalities are a symptom of schizophrenia.  When a person is suffering from multiple personalities they are diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.  While to be diagnosed one has to show that both personalities are very strong, like a completely different person living inside of their head that can come out whenever triggered.  Extensive use of social media platforms can increase the risk or cause the emergence of dissociative identity disorder (D.I.D.) in young adults.  

To be able to understand the effects of social media on young adults and how it can be linked to dissociative identity disorder, one must first understand just what dissociative identity disorder is.  According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), the first criteria of D.I.D. is “Two or more distinct identities or personality states are present, each with its own relatively enduring pattern of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the environment and self,” (DSM 372).  The DSM also states that the differing personality states can be seen as an “experience of possession” (DSMV 372-78).  These states can involve obvious points of discontinuity in one’s sense of self, and by related variations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, understanding, and/or sensory-motor functioning.  Psychiatrists say that the individual or others can report these signs and symptoms.  But what is D.I.D. like for someone who suffers from a by the book case?  In the 1993 documentary Dialogues With Madwomen, Mairi McFall describes her multiples personalities as a “coping mechanism” for the multiple forms of abuse she endured as a child and young adult.  She says that she “created” these personalities in response to different traumas.  Later in life while speaking with a therapist, Mairi felt that “someone named Brittany” needed to speak.  Her therapist asked her to sit in another chair, and said that when she did she would be Brittany.  At this point Mairi had amnesia from the point she sat in the other chair until she moved back into the original chair.  This is yet another criterion of D.I.D. given to us by the DSM: “Amnesia must occur, defined as gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information and/or traumatic events.” (DSM-V 372-78).  This criteria for D.I.D. recognizes that amnesia doesn't just occur for traumatic events but, rather, everyday events, too.  The other three state criteria of D.I.D. given by the DSM-V are as follows: 

The person must be distressed by the disorder or have trouble functioning in one or more major life areas because of the disorder, the disturbance is not part of normal cultural or religious practices, and the symptoms are not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (such as blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or a general medical condition (such as complex partial seizures).  (DSM-V).

These criteria are to separate black outs caused by physiological things and not from blatant personality switching, to show that the disorder is actively causing a struggle in the individuals life, and to get rid of accepted versions of multiplicity that exists in various forms of religious practices throughout today’s society.  Dissociative identity disorder is a very serious disease and is not as rare as originally thought to be.  Today psychiatrists believe that 1% of people have mild to serious forms of DID.  To put that into perspective, that’s 1 out of every 100 people, and with 7 billion human inhabitants on Earth, there are nearly 70,000,000 people worldwide suffering from dissociative identity disorder.  This is a worldwide problem that was originally thought to be caused solely from abuse stemming from childhood, but as the world is rapidly changing, so is mental illness and those who suffer from it. 

So what does cause dissociative identity disorder?  Today doctors nationwide generally agree that any form of trauma that the sufferer goes through causing them to create, in their minds, another persona to deal with such trauma, causes dissociative identity disorder.  These cases are generally linked to emotional and physical abuse but there is yet to be set in stone evidence about what causes one to begin to dissociate or what makes them create other people inside of their heads.  Apart from the trauma as a stressor, why do suffers of dissociative identity disorder dissociate?  It typically happens in a sequence.  To begin with one disconnect from ones self to get past some sort of traumatic event.  This is known as avoidance coping.  People who dissociate to deal with a traumatic experience tend to develop a habit of dissociating as a coping strategy.  After a long period of disconnecting from ones self while using avoidance coping, the patients are seen to start creating alternate personalities.  An alternate personality is exactly what it sounds like; another person.  People who suffer from dissociative disorders literally have multiple people living inside of their heads.  As McFall states in the Madwomen documentary, she has had over 20 different people inside of her head.  She also describes the trauma that she faced as a child as well.  She felt that even as a baby that no one wanted her, and that no one loved her.  She also suffered from physical trauma as well.  She was raped and beaten multiple times.  These are very severe instances of trauma that no one deserves, but are good example of what types of trauma can cause one to dissociate from one’s self.  She describes the different people in her head to be different people but her at the same time.  Many therapists first wanted to diagnose her with schizophrenia but this simply was not a symptom of schizophrenic patient.  Contrary to popular belief, schizophrenia patients do not have multiple personalities and only the sufferers of dissociative disorders do.  So with trauma and extended use of avoidance coping as means of dealing with trauma as the cause for dissociative identity disorder; social media acts as potentiator for dissociative disorders. 

Twitter, by and large, is the social media giant for people between the ages of 15-29, which also includes the range of people that begin to develop serious psychological disorders.  Twitter allows the user to create an account and ‘tweet’ and interact with other 140 character messages.  The vast majority of users, obviously, use this form of social media just for that; so @(insert generic twitter handle) can let all of his or her followers know that their “calculus class is so darn hard!!”  All of Twitter does not follow this sort of standard though.  With the anonymity given to a twitter user, one can create an account and use the account in many different ways whether it is for a business, personal account, comedy account or an Internet personality.  It is in this that issues begin to occur.  Like noted in the popular web series Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared episode four, when discussing the topic on internet usage, Roy’s computer says to Yellow Guy “It’s not the real you, it’s the digital you!”  To which the character Duck responds, “If he’s not quite real, then I’m not real too.”  It is this mentality that starts to cause problems with the human psyche.  When a person feels that what they are doing does not have a real-world type repercussion, then it can lead them to abuse what is given to them.  Further into episode four the computer is showing the three characters what there is to do in the “computer world”, i.e. the Internet, and to do so the computer is opening doors.  Behind multiple doors there is absolutely nothing signifying the artificial atmosphere of living an Internet out a life.  Moving back into the realm of social media, what could start as innocently posting updates that would make the users followers or online friends believe that they are living a life that is different from their actual lives in a better way can easily become a form of avoidance coping.  

When one starts turning to social media and a mass of followers or online friends that are not included in one’s daily life it becomes much easier to continue feeding theses people untruths that allow one to cope with the trauma in one’s life.  Like stated above, a long history of avoidance coping typically leads to dissociative disorders.  With social media specifically tied in with avoidance coping after what could be years of lying about ones life could become the development of an online persona.  This is someone that a person only is online.  That sounds a lot like a socially acceptable form of a dangerous disease.  If dissociative identity disorder is marked by having more than one personality then is that really any different from switching back and forth from one’s real life personality to one’s online personality?  Having more than one personality no matter the setting can cause a lot of confusion for a person and only continue to harm one’s mental health.  There are a plethora of examples on twitter of obvious online personalities simply due to the absurd content, but are also extremely active, meaning that the accounts post consistently throughout the day.  This means that a large, near bizarre amount of time is dedicated to keeping the online personality alive.  When a person is dedicating such a vast amount of time to maintain an online personality, it is very easy to assume that the online persona has become real in their minds. Accounts such as @BillRatchet, @SadieIsOnFire, and @Debo while on the surface only appear as meme accounts are in reality someone’s online personality.  Assuming a user of a twitter account has gone through the kind of trauma that is seen in the sufferers of dissociative disorders then one can clearly see that if the patient is using avoidance coping through a form of social media that could indeed lead to the creation of actual personalities inside ones head.  It has long been theorized that social media use greatly impacts the psychological development of teenagers as stated in the 2015 experiment with personal social media and coping skills. 

It has long been speculated that personal social network plays a critical role in the development of psychological distress and mental problems in young people. Social contact with peers or friends to a large degree reflects a person’s psychological state and personality traits such as self-esteem, self-confidence, openness, etc. (Tang, Qin).

This experiment concluded that people aging from 16 to 25 using avoidance style coping mechanisms through social media were at a higher risk for suicidal ideation.  While this experiment was not analyzing any specific form of mental disorders its findings are still relevant because it relates in two ways:  the use of personal social media in the young adult age group, and psychological problems brought on with avoidance coping.  Due to Fang Tang and Ping Qin’s findings in their experiments regarding suicidal ideation, it further provides evidence of a link between social media and dissociative disorders.  There are countless scholarly articles that have been written that have near entirely confirmed that social media use, in extremes, can lead to serious negative effects on a person’s mental health.  Therefore there is a link between social media and mental illness meaning that the use of social media platforms could act as a cause or potentiator of mental illness.  

With all of the evidence pointing to the detrimental impacts of those likely to develop mental illness, and many traditional doctors failing to label social media use as a possible potentiator for mental illness, we are forced to wonder why. There is more than enough evidence that shows there is an obvious link between social media use and mental disorders.  Psychologist, psychiatrists and therapists alike should take it upon themselves to start talking with their patients about their use of social media to begin diagnosing and treating mental disease before it reaches a point that endangers the patient or the people around the patient.  Too many times we, as a society, are too late and young people hurt themselves or someone else.  This is something that needs to be dealt with; this is an epidemic.  Worldwide, the stigma that mental illness is “not as bad as it is made out to be” and that the sufferers are “just pretending” needs to end.  This is dangerous as a society for the neglect to be the way of dealing with such illness.  Neglect is simply another form of emotional trauma and can only make things worse.  Social media, while fun, can be a dangerous place for people that are prone to having mental illness; whether that be from genetic type diseases such as schizophrenia or trauma induced illness such as dissociative disorders.  From McFall talking about her struggles with dissociative identity disorder, Don’t Hug Me Im Scared’s child-like recreations of real world problems, or real life social experiments run by the scientists and sociologists of todays world, everyone agrees that the internet and social media have a true impact on a person’s mental health.  People worldwide are suffering and it is our job as the future of our society to do something about it.  It is obvious to conclude that the extensive use of social media platforms can increase the risk or cause the emergence of dissociative disorders in young adults.  Social media may be fun, but even it has a dark side.
