The past couple months have been hands down the worst I have ever experienced. I was constantly sad, down, hopeless and many other things. I tried pushing through it and just thinking to myself tomorrow will be better or just change my mind set, but nothing helped. It became a much bigger issue than anticipated.

It wasn’t until Christmas break when I realized how bad these feelings were affecting me. They were taking over my life. I was very distant and almost estranged from my own life. It wasn’t until I was forced to go to the doctor just to talk through what was going on when I was diagnosed with major depression. Everything was coming together to why I was feeling the way I was.

The next big task was figuring out the trigger. What is the underlying cause? After speaking with the doctor and my mom there was something similar that kept arising in the conversations — social media. Though this wasn’t the main trigger — and I’m not saying that if you look at social media will you become depressed — but for someone like me and maybe others, social media is a huge part of our generation’s life and it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.

The unreasonable pictures of individuals that girls and others are comparing themselves to is damaging one’s self-esteem and how they look at themselves. The amount of competition it creates for girls is outrageous. Girls look at other girls and immediately begin self-shamming themselves and comparing themselves to others. Social media is slowly changing the lives of many girls and some don’t realize what an impact it can have on their lives.

Abby Olson

Mercer Island