Facebook and 'Attention Seekers'

'I hate my life'
'WHY CAN'T PERSON XX JUST GET OUT MY LIFE'
'why does no1 like me?'
'Some ppl just need to get lost'

I'm sure at least one of the above rings a bell. I think at some point or other we've all stumbled across something along those lines on our timeline, or maybe even typed the words ourselves before hastily pressing backspace or yes, sometimes; 'Update Status'. It's not a particularly brave or clever thing to do, and certainly no-one going to applaud it as your finest hour, but it does appear to be an increasing occurrence. Is it really just attention seeking, or a sign that something's starting to go a little bit wrong out there in the non-virtual world?

I'll be honest, I've been tempted myself. I am not the most confident of people emotionally, and find it really hard to approach someone and say 'look, I'm really struggling with some personal stuff right now'. I've tried to push out some subtle signs, but no-one's picked up on them and don't have the guts to push it any more than that - or I just don't want to bother anyone. I have in the past got to the point where it's genuinely felt like no-one's ever going to notice and that a viable option is to just get it off my chest online - even though I get annoyed when I see others do just that. I'm not trying to make this whole thing about me - the point is that this is coming from someone with amazing family and friends who I know I can always talk to - so I can't believe I've been the only one to have felt like this, or that it's ever been as bad for me as it has for others.

When we log onto Facebook, we want to laugh, mess around, and let's be honest, to try and 'earn' attention for ourselves with funny or thought provoking updates and links. We don't want to be confronted with other people's problems. The issue is that we're in danger of catapulting into a stage where we never want to come to face to face with our responsibility to each other at any time. It's just so much easier to call it attention seeking and get on with our own lives, and our own problems.

I totally agree that posting your in-depth problems to all of your online friends isn't wise, especially when you're in a bad mood and more inclined to write something you don't mean, and that it is really, completely annoying when someone posts 'I hate my life right now' or something generic that you can't do anything about, but the truth is that for every pure attention seeker, there's someone who's posted because they feel awful and no-one in the real world has noticed . Here's a clue though - they pop up exactly the same on your Facebook timeline.

I think it all comes down to this. If we were better at spotting when someone's feeling rough - and by that I mean actively looking out for each other, then there'd be more space on Facebook for silly videos and memes and whatever else we want to use to waste our time with. Granted, there will always be people who demand, let's call it, more than their fair share of attention, but if we were better at knowing when something was truly wrong, we would be able to spot those people a mile off.

This isn't a moral high-ground rant. I've been on both sides of the page- I've been at the point where I just want to tell the world via a status update precisely how awful I feel, when there are plenty people in my life I know would have listened, and I'm ashamed to say that all too often I haven't noticed when someone else has been having a tough time of it, and the first I've heard is with the rest of the world on Facebook. I don't think I'm alone in either camp - so let's see if we can work together to look after each other - both in the virtual world and in the scary real one.