Thank You(Tube) for your social support

Sammanfattning: This paper explores the reason why young adults choose to talk about their psychological health and wellbeing on the video-sharing website, YouTube. The study was carried out by six semi-structured interviews with six different ‘YouTubers’ (meaning people who have their own channel and upload videos to the website). To qualify for the study the respondents had to have at least 5000 subscribers to their YouTube-channel, been actively uploading videos for the past 6 months and be older than 18 years of age. The main reasons why the participants chose to post videos about their psychological health were concluded to be; receiving and giving social support and destigmatization. The study found three main categories from the interviews: identity, social support and social work. A key finding is the support that all the respondents receive from the YouTube community, where thousands of people can connect and share their stories online. The paper continues to argue that the respondents are engaging in social work based on the fact that they are responding to thousands of messages and working actively to spread awareness and prevent stigmatization.