Students are turning to memes for mental health support because university pressure is so bad

When higher education cares more about recruiting students than whether they actually want to be here, is it any surprise so many are miserable?

One in four students have mental health problems. Almost a third of graduates end up in jobs they’re overqualified for (Richard Bouhet/AFP/Getty)

“When u bout to sleep and hear a noise downstairs but you don’t gotta pay student loans if ur murdered.” 20,000 likes and retweets.

It’s a pretty bleak time to be a student, to say the least. One in four students has mental health problems. Almost a third of graduates end up in jobs they’re overqualified for. Our chances of owning a home are half what it was for our parents. And of course, that’s if climate change doesn’t kill us all first.

This isn’t new information. Journalists my dad’s age (who incidentally didn’t have to pay tuition fees) have mused on my generation’s failings from every angle. But if you actually want to know what real students think, it’s not hard to find out. Follow the memes.

Facebook pages such as “Dank Memes for Sheffield Teens”, “University of Memechester”, and “Memeperial” at first glance might just seem like the ramblings of bored 20-year-olds, but look a little closer, and you’ll see that lots of them are, well, kind of dark.

One pits a student’s mental health over work, a struggling social life and a poor diet, and surprise, surprise – it’s a losing battle. Others joke about going hungry because a student loan isn’t enough to live off. Some aren’t quite as subtle: “Relatives: How’s uni? Me: it’s literally destroying my mental health.” Reposted to a popular student meme Instagram account, it racked up thousands of likes. “So true” and laughing reactions have filled the comments.

These pages aren’t all doom and gloom, but beyond the normal amount of rating local nightclubs and anger at lack of library seats, there’s a sinister undertone that can’t be ignored. These pages are not just joking about the difficulties of student life, they’re addressing some of the biggest taboos of life under marketised education.

Of course, using humour to cope with struggle goes back much further than the internet. As long as humans have suffered, they have joked about it. Psychologists have called it “gallows humour” – comedy when one is on the brink of death.

It can be tracked through art, literature and history – from letters written home from the trenches of the Western Front, to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, when Mercutio quips with his dying breath, “ask for me tomorrow and you shall find me a grave man”.

Part of the power of comedy is that you’re not laughing alone. Finding humour in darkness is a communal act, a uniting force of solidarity. And in sharing these #relatable experiences, these meme social media accounts are doing just that. When mental illness is so fuelled by isolation, and the sense that no one knows what you’re going through, sharing your struggle with others can be a powerful act of survival.

But it’s about more than just support. These online communities are using humour to expose the reality of university marketisation. When universities care more about recruiting students than whether they actually want to be here, is it any surprise so many are miserable?

When the constant message is that employability matters more than learning, is it any wonder they don’t feel fulfilled? Recruitment teams promise 17-year-olds “the best years of your life”, but where’s the concern when they get here and realise it’s not all they were sold?

Fed up of concerns falling on deaf ears, students have taken their venting to corners of the internet where the generations who created this mess won’t find it.

They’ve formed their own forums to discuss higher education’s new normal, and to reassure each other that they deserve more.

Feeling constantly anxious about your future career isn’t normal. Working until 4am every night and driving yourself to the brink over your essays isn’t normal.

Vice chancellors earning hundreds of thousands while there are students using food banks isn’t normal. The absurdity of these memes highlights the absurdity of reality, highlights that it shouldn’t have to be like this.

This isn’t just the musings of bored students. This is the gallows humour of young people facing a jobs market, housing market, climate and government stacked against them. This is the comedy of a generation without much to laugh about. But hey, you gotta laugh or you’ll cry, right?