Have you ever scrolled through social media, only to realize that the symptoms you are seeing for mental health disorders match your everyday life? That experience is becoming increasingly common for emerging adults.
Social media has changed how college students talk about mental health. While it is important that awareness has increased, the constant stream of wellness content can blur the line between normal discomfort and clinical disorder. Algorithms push emotionally charged posts that label everyday stress as trauma, nervousness as anxiety, or conflict as abuse. Because of this, social media has fundamentally transformed how emerging adults understand and describe mental health and its terms.
This matters because language shapes perception. When students use clinical terms for everyday experiences, they may unintentionally weaken their coping skills. Nick
Haslam, Professor of Psychology at the University of Melbourne, calls this change “Concept Creep”, a term for the expansion of harm-related definitions, meaning that words like trauma or disorder are applied more broadly than ever before. Seeing and hearing therapy-speak online encourages students to adopt diagnostic labels without professional evaluation.
Higher Education professionals are seeing the effects as students compare academic discomfort to trauma. Strengthening mental health literacy helps students distinguish between temporary discomfort and true psychological disorders, which can build resilience, and support appropriate help-seeking.
Content for this segment was created by Audrey L. Gibson as part of a project for EA515: Wellness in Higher Education taught by Dr. Clubbs in the Fall of 2026. Audrey is a Senior Administrative Assistant in the Office of Residence Life and graduate student in the Higher Education Administration program. Her professional and academic interests include student well-being, mental health literacy, student engagement, and retention. Audrey’s goal is to work as a student affairs professional.
Resources:
• National Institute of Mental Health: https://www.nimh.nih.gov • American Psychological Association: http://www.apa.org/topics/mental-health
• Haslam, N. (2016). Concept creep: Psychology’s expanding concepts of harm and pathology. Psychological Inquiry, 27(1), 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2016.1082418
