"Social media is fake - I looked happy on Instagram but in reality I was suicidal" - video Dailymotion

A  Yorkshire man who lost his brother to suicide says social media allowed him to create a "false sense of reality" when he was struggling to cope.

Transcript

00:00 I ran downstairs screaming. I went outside and found that he'd hung himself on the balcony.

00:05 He'd taken his own life.

00:06 I'm not gonna lie to you. There's not a day that goes by where I don't think about it.

00:12 I have nightmares about it. I always think about it. It was awful. I wouldn't wish it upon anybody.

00:18 But one thing I will say to you is, if that would have not happened to me

00:23 eight years ago, I would not be stood here right now talking to you lovely people.

00:29 And that is how you should see life. Life isn't easy. Life has never been easy and it never will

00:35 be easy. But once you start seeing life happening for you instead of to you, your life will change

00:40 in an unprofound way. And the other thing about social media that I think I hate the most

00:45 is bullying. I've been a victim to bullying in the past. It's awful. It's one of the worst

00:50 feelings that can ever happen to you. Bullying in person is bad enough because it f***ing hurts.

00:58 Bullying online is even worse because when you say something to somebody in person, it goes. It's

01:04 not there. It's not tangible. When you say something to somebody online, it's there. It never goes away.

01:10 And that person that you've said something to is constantly reminded of the hurtful thing that you

01:14 have said. And like I said before, the person with the biggest smile on their face can be the one

01:19 struggling the most. So they put a kid in a classroom with a marshmallow and said, "There's a

01:24 marshmallow there. If you eat it, that's fine. But if you wait half an hour, you can have two more

01:29 marshmallows." And because he didn't want to delay that gratification for a bigger reward, he ate the

01:34 marshmallow straight away, but then was disappointed with himself because he knew if he'd have waited

01:38 half an hour, he could have two more. And that is the difference between instant and delayed

01:42 gratification. So practicing resilience, this means that when you have a difficult day,

01:50 it means not giving up. Not giving up at the first sight of hardship. Not giving up at the first

01:56 failure. Making sure that you are getting to the end of the day and you keep fighting and you keep

02:00 pushing. That is mental resilience. But like I said in the talk earlier, if we focus on our health

02:06 and we focus on our happiness, making sure we're doing the foundations right every day, we're eating

02:11 right, we're exercising, that's going to give us far much more energy and it's going to give us

02:16 far much more mental resilience to then overcome life's challenges and life's adversity. I am

02:22 grateful for my partner. I'm grateful for a roof over my head. I'm grateful to be able to speak in

02:27 front of you today because I absolutely love it. I'm grateful for clean water. I'm grateful for my

02:33 health. Those are just a number of things that I will tell myself every single day I'm grateful for

02:38 because I am focusing on what I've got. I'm not focusing on what I don't have. And like I said,

02:42 when we focus on what you've got, you always have enough. When you focus on what you don't have,

02:46 you never have enough. Like I said, the richest person in the world is the person who has enough.