By Monte Wilson
We sometimes go through school at a speed that doesn’t allow us to notice precisely how much our perception shapes the way we go through everything, especially when social media and our mental health get involved. When my class started planning our 10th-grade exhibition, I didn’t realize how deeply these three concepts were connected until we actually started building it. Through filming B-rol, interviewing, editing, and presenting, the Innovation Academy class created a successful short documentary surrounding how mental health, prevention, and social media connect in the learning environment.
The part that really challenged me but taught me the most was working on the seven-minute documentary with Noah. We interviewed several school counselors and students to see how social media alters the way people view themselves and others. One counselor mentioned how students always compare their lives to “perfect” posts online, even when they know the posts aren’t real. Hearing that changed my perspective because I realized that was something I do all the time without even noticing it. Filming these conversations made me realize how easily our perception can get twisted and how that can hurt our mental health in ways we often don’t realize.
I also learned a great deal from the physical setup of the exhibition. I was in charge of taping quotes and artwork onto the walls for hours with Pablo, works that trace their roots back to perception, mental health, and social media. I felt like it was just a decoration at first, but once I read every quote and saw the art, it occurred to me that it was pretty much a visual version of our documentary. Those quotes showed the negative and positive sides of the way we view ourselves. Some talked about judgment, some about identity, and others about how the online world can make real life seem smaller or less important. Helping get everything up got me thinking about how perception is something we create or shape, just like the exhibition itself. After going through this whole process, I learned that perception is the bridge that connects mental health and social media. How we see ourselves online affects how we feel about ourselves offline, and that feeling changes the way we act in school, with friends, and even alone. The exhibition wasn’t just about presenting these ideas, but it made me realize just how they show up in my own life every day. If there’s one main thing I’m taking away, it’s that being aware of how we interpret the world can help us protect our mental health. When we pause to question what we are seeing – especially on social media – we give ourselves a chance to see our lives more clearly and treat ourselves with more honesty.
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