The algorithm and mental health.

What place does mental health content have on the feed?

There’s a very real and live conversation around the link between social media use and the impact on mental health.

This all-seeing, all-knowing algorithm which reels us in and then won’t let us go.

But I’ve also been pondering it from the other side, from the place of a mental health content creator, wondering what place this type of content has on the feed, and what it might show about where we are as a society.

I’ve built my following on LinkedIn, with 55,000 lovely people choosing to listen to my musings.

But recently, I’ve noticed a sharp decline in reach. Views, impressions, engagements, profile views…it’s all dropped off a cliff.

Now, I’m not the only one. Probably at least once a day I see someone on my feed talking about it.

But then I look at what content is getting ahead and “winning”.

It’s recycled templates about how to “supercharge your content with AI” or “78 winning AI prompts”.

It’s all about AI and optimisation.

The humanness of the platform is being sucked out, replaced by a mindless sea of repetitive, AI-generated nonsense.

Then I’ve seen LinkedIn employees talking about wanting to help their users build “economic” value.

In essence, they want people to grow themselves and their careers using LinkedIn, therefore making more money, therefore being more likely to stay on the platform and spend money. Which is all fine and noble.

But what place does mental health content have in all of this?

Sadly, I think it’s a tiny place, if one at all.

Content about personal stories, about wellbeing, about mental health, seem to be tanking.

It reflects a clear broader shift in society that seems to have moved on from the wellbeing conversation, resigning workplace wellbeing to be more of a “fad” that gets shelved away, while only a few good companies and individuals remain to fight the good fight.

I believe the algorithm doesn’t think wellbeing content will help users build this “economic value”.

But that’s just total horse crap.

A good sense of wellbeing (physical and mental) is the bedrock to a healthy lifestyle, one that allows us to work well and to work hard, to progress and achieve success, to build a sustainable life that allows economic value to follow.

But that’s far too nuanced a point for how society often treats this conversation.

Particularly in the Western world, where humans are treated more like machines - we are constantly trying to optimise ourselves, and if we get sick - we don’t rest, we just take some pills and hop back on the rat race treadmill.

Perhaps I’m being overdramatic. Someone could easily say to me that LinkedIn is the “professional” platform, and if I want to make mental health content, then I should go on over to Facebook or Instagram.

But I do think it’s deeper than that. There was a period when wellbeing content was valued. I was made an invite-only LinkedIn Top Voice off the back of it.

Now, some of my posts get seen by only 1-2% of my followers. That’s a crazy shift.

Of course, I have some personal bias here. Obviously I want my content to reach more people. But it makes me worried about the wider trend of where we’re heading.

AI, redundancy, optimisation, money, growth, hustle, grind…

What happened to just being human?

George x