By Katherine Mann, Guest writer
According to the Depression and Suicide Education Awareness Program, I Need a LightHouse, about 20 percent of teens experience depression before adulthood. And 10 to 15 percent of teens will experience symptoms of depression at any one time.
There are many different ways to cope with depression, and according to Dr. Edward Dreyfus, a clinical psychologist and life coach in Santa Monica, humor is the method most often used. For teens, it’s easier to share their feelings of sadness through making others laugh. Dreyfus suggests that teens do this to be considered less of a burden.
Lately, a popular way of using humor to express depression and sadness is through the trend of memes. But what is a meme? A meme is a humorous image, video, or text, often times making fun of a subject, viewed or shared by internet users. There are many different genres to memes, and memes circulating around depression have been rather popular lately, especially to teens and young adults.
Memes can be found almost anywhere, but social media platforms are the main outlet for these humorous images that impact society so greatly. A survey done by the Pew Research Center states that 94 percent of teens use some type of social media platform, or multiple. This shows the relevance of memes in teens lives, but why use humorous pictures to mask feelings rather than being up front?
“I feel like usually a lot of kids aren’t used to talking about what they experience mentally and emotionally,” says Madison Roell, a 16-year-old meme lover from Indian Trail High School & Academy.
“In this day and age, if you talk about how you feel, most people just think you want attention. But when you show it in the form of humor, nobody thinks anything of it,” said Roell, a Communications Academy student.
Humans naturally feel like they need to have a sense of belonging, teens and young adults especially. As they crave to belong, they find different ways to communicate and relate to others. Many teens state that memes are a great way to find a group of people with similar feelings or interests, which is why they’re used so much to express emotions.
“I think it’s a kind of way to validate your feelings… Like someone else feels like this too, and it’s not just me,” Tori Dobias, a junior at Carthage College, said.
Many people agreed that using memes are not a way to make fun of the topic of depression, rather they are more of a way to share their thoughts.
“I don’t usually address my feelings unless it’s in a comedic way, like I make fun of myself in it. It’s actually relieving in a sense,” Dobias said.