Mental Health Awareness by Young People in 4.0 Era
When people heard about “4.0” era, they might be thinking about “advance in technology”, “the digitalization” or maybe “the internet”. This word, 4.0, is so powerful and has endless meaning. Now, we are living in Industrial Revolution of 4.0, when the internet develop with high speed and full of invention of several social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and many others.
The development of high technology gives both positive and negative impacts to the society especially young generation. The example of positive impacts, like now we are in this tough times called COVID-19 pandemic, we know that social media brings people closer virtually. As we can connect to our family members, relatives, or even friends without physical contact. We also can spread social messages and start campaigning, faster and wider.
But, the high-technology also brings negative impact. For the example, when we are on the internet or when we get on social media, sometimes we are looking for attention or the appreciation, and many of us start comparing our lives to the others. Do we realize? It can trigger to the anxiety, self-doubt, depression, or low self-esteem and it can drive to mental illness.
Number of mental health issues is increasing especially in young people, because most of us still have unstable mood and unstable emotions, sometimes it can be exploded and get worse. Technology and social media could be a ‘weapon’ that can empower other young people, but on other side it also can destroy our mental stability. It is really important for young people to have the strong foundation within ourselves, so we can use this tools positively.
From the statistics in 2019, the biggest group of internet users worldwide is between age 10–30 years old. It shows how massive young generation use the internet in the daily basis. Young generation should be creative and responsible while using the internet. One of the real action is by campaigning mental health as the part of socio cultural information.
We can ask ourselves, first:
Why is mental health important?
Why the role of young generation really matters to raise mental health awareness in this 4.0 era?
Mental health is important in everyone’s life. Because it connects to our physical health, to society, and it impacts on how we live our lives. But, in fact, more than 80 % of people don’t receive the proper information about this topic. And, there are still stigma that shapes a bad image on people having mental illness especially in our country, Indonesia.
So, in this 4.0 era, mental health literacy is really important. And young people have critical role to be the agent of campaign in this social movement. Young people can make the content, we can use our voices, or words to raise mental health awareness. Moreover, we can exchange mental health information and spread over the world. It is really good strategy to break the negative stigma in our society.
But, we still have challenges in using internet for mental health campaign. In some cases, the messages or information are not verified and eventually the viewers are misled. It is same as ‘hoax’ information. So, what should we do before campaigning and start spreading the message?
The answer is, We should confirm the information to the professional, first.
Is it accurate? Is it credible? Is it true?
That is important step so the campaign goal is clear. So, keep in mind that we should have valid information to be informed to others.
Nowadays, we can find numerous content about mental health and most of them are made by young generation. We should be proud of it. It’s really exciting that we combine information technology with internet with social media to raise mental health awareness. Once, Christian Lange said “Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master”. What we have to do is being responsible and trying to minimize the negative effects. We hope information and communication technology can be the tools to help solving other socio cultural problems.
I am open to a discussion about this topic, thank you everyone! — Fathiya Khairiya
