Fighting Toxic Culture

Photo provided by H. King.

Photo provided by H. King.

Toxic culture is so overrated and too widely accepted. Many people talk about cancel culture, a trend of ruining people’s reputations because of the things you can find about them on the internet; the next rising star is toxic culture. Toxic culture is when people go on social media and brag about their toxic traits or unhealthy habits in relationships. The reason as to why we are embracing this is unknown.

As a society, we have lost sight of the classic relationship and communication styles. Having parental issues is a huge part of toxic culture. While social media can connect those with similar issues and create reassurement,, it can definitely cause more problems than it solves. Social media targets teenagers and young adults and at these ages it is easy to crave the feeling of fitting in. Seeing these posts can cause viewers to exaggerate their childhood experiences in ways to label themselves with these parental issues. 

Social media really isn’t the problem though;the problem is how comfortable we are with it. If everyone used social media with the intention of raising awareness, spreading kindness, and generally just keeping up with their friends despite busy schedules, there would evidently still be issues like body comparisons and photo editing, but no one would be turning to social media to get attention because of their lives. 

Though toxic culture is a self-diagnosing weapon, it also can normalize real mental health conditions through these exaggerations that can cause confusion and embarrassment for the audience. No one wants to ask their doctor about a bad habit someone online told them was in regards to mental health. This toxic culture encourages people to identify themselves with their issues, find reassurance, and make it a trend. 

Toxic culture is unhealthy, and honestly it’s  embarrassing to participate in. It’s dehumanizing to self-diagnose and then invalidate those who have a real medical diagnosis. Toxic culture is just another continuation of social media’s spread of searching for issues and promoting them as impressive.