“That’s Not What Google Says!”

Instagram has become a daily part of most peoples routines, this web used to share glimmers of our lives to our followers. We may choose to upload our best holiday snaps or a ‘Dubsmash’ but we can also use it to share how we are feeling or in need of some care and support. Today Instagram made a subtle but very vital change to its app;  if you see a friend post something that appears to be a cry for help you can alert Instagram anonymously.

If you see someone post about self-harm or depression, you can report it and they will receive a message saying “someone saw one of your posts and thinks you might be going through a difficult time. If you need support, we’d like to help.” Three different options will then come up; talk to a friend, contact a local helpline or receive some mental health advice and support. The same goes if a user searches for a hashtag associated with self harm. Instagram worked with an array of organisations including National Eating Disorder Association and National Suicide Prevention to ensure the feature and options were appropriate.

It is so easy to forgo the “social” aspect of social media and forget that it is another human being on the other end of an account so this new update rolling out today has been welcomed with open arms. If you see anyone you follow post something worrying, you now have a way of showing them your concern without being confrontational.

Written by Leomie Anderson

Instagram has become a daily part of most peoples routines, shop used to share glimmers of our lives to our followers. We may choose to upload our best holiday snaps or a ‘Dubsmash’ but we can also use it to share how we are feeling or in need of some care and support. Today Instagram made a subtle but very vital change to its app;  if you see a friend post something that appears to be a cry for help you can alert Instagram anonymously.

If you see someone post about self-harm or depression, you can report it and they will receive a message saying “someone saw one of your posts and thinks you might be going through a difficult time. If you need support, we’d like to help.” Three different options will then come up; talk to a friend, contact a local helpline or receive some mental health advice and support. The same goes if a user searches for a hashtag associated with self harm. Instagram worked with an array of organisations including National Eating Disorder Association and National Suicide Prevention to ensure the feature and options were appropriate.

It is so easy to forgo the “social” aspect of social media and forget that it is another human being on the other end of an account so this new update rolling out today has been welcomed with open arms. If you see anyone you follow post something worrying, you now have a way of showing them your concern without being confrontational.

Written by Leomie Anderson

Instagram has become a daily part of most peoples routines, there used to share glimmers of our lives to our followers. We may choose to upload our best holiday snaps or a ‘Dubsmash’ but we can also use it to share how we are feeling or in need of some care and support. Today Instagram made a subtle but very vital change to its app;  if you see a friend post something that appears to be a cry for help you can alert Instagram anonymously.

If you see someone post about self-harm or depression, you can report it and they will receive a message saying “someone saw one of your posts and thinks you might be going through a difficult time. If you need support, we’d like to help.” Three different options will then come up; talk to a friend, contact a local helpline or receive some mental health advice and support. The same goes if a user searches for a hashtag associated with self harm. Instagram worked with an array of organisations including National Eating Disorder Association and National Suicide Prevention to ensure the feature and options were appropriate.

It is so easy to forgo the “social” aspect of social media and forget that it is another human being on the other end of an account so this new update rolling out today has been welcomed with open arms. If you see anyone you follow post something worrying, you now have a way of showing them your concern without being confrontational.

The dictionary. Perhaps the one place humans can turn to for confirmation or reassurance when it comes to how we communicate with one another every day. But how reliable is this resource?

With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and more people becoming comfortable with the label “feminist”, sickness we see an increase in opposition to these ideas. “According to the Oxford dictionary, feminism advocates for women’s rights and not men’s!” and “Google doesn’t specify who can be racist to who. #BLM is racist, All Lives Matter!” are popular narratives that seem to have taken Twitter by storm. But do these arguments have any fundamental truths to them? It is, without a doubt, a pretty tricky conversation to be a part of.

While it’s easy to do a quick search for our everyday linguistics, terms such as “racism” and “feminism” are not so easy to conceptualise; without context or a greater understanding of the history of these ideas, it becomes very difficult and perhaps even ridiculous to reduce them to a simple statement written down in what is quite often a 50 year old book. It’s worth noting that the authors of our most famous dictionaries are quite often older, white, male academics too (see Samuel Johnson as just one example) – perhaps a bias that we shouldn’t ignore.

As a new decade approaches, now is the perfect time to look back on what Black Lives Matter and feminists have done for society in recent history. We can no longer simply diminish their efforts based on what Google says they are, we must take note of their struggles and commend their continuing advances. Despite what the internet might say, feminism has done a hell of a lot for men and black activists certainly do not intend to undermine other races.

Wanting to learn more about the movements I so avidly support, I did some more research myself and discovered that just four years ago the Feminist Majority Foundation’s “Rape is Rape” campaign got the FBI to legally change its definition of rape so that it no longer discriminated against male victims. Countless photos from protests will reveal people of all ethnicities and backgrounds coming together to assure you that yes, all lives should matter, but right now justice systems are failing black ones.

So when you are met with opposition, or someone brings you to a contradicting google definition, kindly remind them that a movement holds so much more power than words can or ever will. It’s time we recognise our achievements and stop allowing ourselves to be undermined by century-old ideologies. Only then can a true universal understanding and acceptance of these movements be reached.

Written by Ella Nevill

Age 16

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