“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.