“Let me overshare real quick…”
It usually starts off as a joke, a meme, a passing comment on a TikTok video, a tweet meant to be funny, or an Instagram caption beneath a carousel of heartbreak or grief. But beneath that humor, behind the curated filters, humour and clever edits, lies something deeper: a generation trying to heal out loud, because silence has never saved us.
In Kenya, mental health conversations have long been buried beneath layers of taboo, religion, and misunderstanding. Many of us grew up being told to “pray it away” or to “stop thinking too much.” Vulnerability was considered weakness, and therapy? That was something for “the rich,” “the broken,” or “a Western culture.” But mental illness doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t wait for your next Sunday service or respond to motivational quotes from WhatsApp groups. It creeps into your everyday into your body, your breath, your silence until ignoring it is no longer an option.
The problem is, access to professional mental health care in Kenya remains extremely limited. There are fewer than 150 psychiatrists serving a population of over 50 million. For most young people, therapy is either unaffordable or inaccessible. So, we go where we know we’ll be heard: the internet.
Our timelines have become digital confessionals. A 22-year-old shares how therapy saved her from self-harm. A content creator posts a vlog about grieving a lost parent. Someone else stitches the video and quietly adds, “same.” These are not just posts; they are stories. Public declarations of pain. Acts of resistance. In a society that still shames emotional honesty, simply saying “I’m not okay” on a platform where others can see it is a radical, and sometimes lifesaving, gesture.
Storytelling becomes therapy. For some, it’s in the captions. For others, it’s in a softly spoken reel about anxiety, or a trending song that carries more weight than the artist will ever admit. The rise of mental health-centered content creators, support pages like Mental 360, Mindful Kenya, or Niskize, and youth-driven safe spaces are proof that we’re building something powerful. Not perfect, but powerful.
Still, healing online comes with its own risks. Oversharing can be harmful, especially when the internet responds with cruelty instead of compassion. Some people turn trauma into gossip. Others trivialize it. And in a space overflowing with “self-care experts” and “TikTok therapists,” there’s always the danger of misdiagnosis, misinformation, or romanticizing mental illness. We must be careful not to confuse visibility with validation, or expression with healing.
And yet, the question remains: Why are so many young Kenyans more comfortable crying on TikTok than talking to the people in their immediate circle? The answer isn’t simple, but it is urgent.
We need mental health education embedded in our schools and campuses. We need subsidized therapy, both in-person and digital. We need media that treats mental wellness not as a trending topic, but as a human right. And we need to stop mocking people especially young people, for being open online. Vulnerability is not weakness. It is a form of courage.
To post your pain online, knowing full well the internet might not always be kind, is to risk being misunderstood. But it’s also a plea. A statement. A reminder to anyone watching: you are not alone.
So here’s to the brave ones who post, who journal out loud, who cry on camera, who use humor to mask the ache, who speak even when their voice trembles; you are making it easier for others to breathe. You are reshaping what healing looks like in a world that often tells us to be quiet.
And maybe, just maybe, this generation isn’t oversharing, it’s undoing the silence that’s haunted us for far too long.
