With social media being so accessible to everyone these days it is easy to forget the effect it can have on teens, especially girls. Young girls these days are constantly watching and comparing themselves to other girls in the spotlight. Whether it be pictures and videos from Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat or Tik Tok it does take a toll on these young girls’ mental health.
Additionally, many teens now are getting smart phones at a younger age which starts this constant comparison. From following girls like Kylie Jenner, that have bodies that are not able to be achieved unless going under a knife, young girls think that is what they are supposed to look like.
Not only does this mean constant comparison, but it can lead to eating disorders, depression and anxiety. Young girls can become so obsessed with thinking that is the way their body’s are supposed to look like that instead of realizing that is a fig of imagination.
Furthermore, most younger girls don’t understand that a lot of girls in the spotlight also use apps to edit their appearance. They can add more or less curves, smooth out their skin, whiten their teeth, you can literally edit anything on an app which also creates another issue. This makes young girls think it is okay to completely transform themselves in a picture to get their ideal look in which they created in their mind. Of course, it is okay to edit some things if you are insecure, but when you are creating a new body or whatever for yourself it can get very dangerous.
I think it is important for social media to become more casual and less picture-ready. Doing this will show young girls it is okay to not have Kylie Jenners body or look the way they think they should.
Social media has impacted everyone’s life and will only continue to grow. With this constant growth, it is very easy for these social media effects to only get worse.
https://counseling.northwestern.edu/blog/effects-social-media-teen-girls/
Hello!
As a teen girl myself, I found your post very interesting and relatable. I agree for young teen girls it can be very hard to be on social media. It is easy to expect girls to compare themselves to other people online and try to alter themselves to look like that when they see that a certain body type or look is getting a lot of praise. It has also been known that social media especially in girls has been known to cause depression, anxiety, eating disorders, etc. Girls can become anxious and feel like something they want to post inst good enough and not worthy to post. I think it is very important for girls to become confident in themselves before joining social media.
As mentioned in a previous comment during quartine the TikTok Chloe Ting “2-week ab workout” was a very popular thing that almost every girl was doing. However, I think this gave people a lot of false hope because this was just not possible to do. The “results” girls saw from this challenge were from people doing way more than just this short workout.
Overall I think it is very important to be confident in yourself before joining social media and revisiting that confidence and doing exercises to stay confident. Celebrities are using photoshop and other altering things to change the way they look on their posts. It is important for young girls to understand this so they realize that is not real and it is photoshop.
sources:
https://counseling.northwestern.edu/blog/effects-social-media-teen-girls/
I’m sure a lot of people can relate when I say that I’ve compared myself to people that I see on my social media. We’ve all done it. It’s human nature to compare ourselves to others. In fact, it’s known as the social comparison theory. Pretty self explanatory, the theory describes how all humans immediately project information or judgement of others back onto ourselves. While sometimes comparison can be helpful in learning about ourselves or even motivating us, in my opinion, there are more negatives than positives. Some of these negatives being anxiety, depression, excessive spending habits, low self-confidence, and overall poor mental health.
It can be really hard to avoid falling into this “comparison trap” (Psychology Today). I agree with the author that social medias should focus less on the idea of perfectionism. While you can choose to follow models and celebrities, it’s a good idea to follow people who look similar to you on social media, with similar body types, ethnicities, and lifestyles. I think that following like-minded people and those with similar looks can help combat the comparison that we all inevitably do.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201711/the-comparison-trap
I think social media has turned into a shameful platform. No matter what celebrity’s page you go on, you still find haters tearing them down, when girls at home are trying to change everything about their appearance to look more like them. It is such a toxic cycle. If you click on the link below, the site aids you in stopping these anxious thoughts before they arrive with helpful tips on how to not let social media get the best of you. If you notice, the portion of the article where is talks about positive aspects of these sites is over-powered with the numerous and never-ending problems that it causes. In my opinion, the bad in this case outweighs the good.
I guess you could say that I am biased because I am certainly guilty of letting unattainable celebrity’s appearances get to me. I have be a victim of anxiety due to the fact that I constantly strive to look like these other girls I see on these platforms.
No matter which way you spin a positive aspect of these sites, it is always trumped by a negative one that overrides it. Sure, you can lecture younger children to not give into appearances and to not let social media get the best of them, but it’s not like that will stick. We live vicariously through these websites nowadays, which is a sad reality.
If you were to go back in time and stop the makers of these sites from creating social media, would you? It seems like a very controversial topic because we cannot imagine our lives without them! I’m curious to hear your thoughts about it.
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/mental-health/social-media-and-mental-health.htm
I definitely see your point and I agree with some aspects, but I think we need to realize that social media can have positive impacts as long as we educate younger teens. It’s up to older adults to educate their kids on the dangers of social media and have important conversations about mental illness before problems like this can arise. As a teen, I loved to use Instagram and Twitter. My family made sure to have a whole “family talk” with me before I got the accounts, but it prevented me from getting hurt on the apps.
Let’s talk about the positives of social media too. Social media helps us stay connected with others and help us keep up with what is going on in their lives. Social media also allows teens to confide in other teens and talk about what is bothering them in their home life. It can be an outlet for those who don’t necessarily have one with their at-home friends/family. Social media also personally helped me figure out what I wanted to do in my life. Social media helped me develop a love for public relations and 4 years later I am here at Penn State majoring in it.
As a final note, I think it is really up to adults and schooling to educate teens more on the dangers of social media. The more we normalize talking about it, the less dangerous it will be to others.
https://jogamayadevicollege.ac.in/uploads/1586197536.pdf
I can definitely understand the validity behind this post. Especially during quarantine I found myself timelessly scrolling through TikTok. When doing so, I would subconsciously compare myself to those young women simply famous for how they look. For a Woman Studies class I took last year, I did my final project on how social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram impact young women’s mental health. In interviews I conducted with my peers it was a clear conclusion that these platforms have had a negative effect on their mental health. They would constantly compare their body types, likes, and followers to those famous accounts. This is incredibly damaging when it comes to mental illness and disorders. In a study they found, “In addition to highly visual social media exposure, Holland and Tiggemann (2016) determined that negative feedback from peers, including comments and liking or non-liking, on photo-based posts also positively correlated with disordered eating and body dissatisfaction” (Kennedy 18-19). Several studies have been conducted to relate the negative impact social media exposure had on young teens.
We are the first generation to grow up under the spot light that comes with social media. Young women expect to be judged and scrutinized on social media. This leads to an increase of heavily edited photos that only their best self is shown online. Our generation has shown an increase in anxiety and depression rates, which social media has a large contribution towards. There is a pressure that comes with constantly being connected online.
I also believe that men are impacted by social media in different ways. I notice that females tend to post more often on these platforms. However, men also face body comparison in what photos receive the most attention from other users.
Overall, I agree that with the development of social media only leads to worsening mental health. With users starting even younger, the impact is detrimental. Our parents never experienced the same social pressure, so they often are unaware of the impact is has on our generation.
Kennedy, K. (2019). Positive and negative effects of social media on adolescent well-being [Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/925/
I agree that social media can be detrimental to the mental health of teenage girls when growing up. It can be extremely hard to not compare ourselves to those with hourglass figures and flat stomachs. I actually did a research project on body image and social media in high school and discovered that a lot of women and teens will go to plastic surgeons and ask them to look like celebrities such as the Kardashians. They will also frequently show surgeons pictures of them with a snapchat filter on and ask to achieve that look, which is impossible a lot of the time. These filters can be dangerous because we tend to like that version of ourselves better than how we look in a regular smartphone camera. Filters can make our eyes bigger, our noses smaller and even change the shape of our face which cannot be done surgically a lot of the time.
During quarantine, a lot of people on tiktok started doing “ten minute” ab workouts and advertising the results on their accounts. It sparked a trend that had thousands of teenage girls doing Chloe Ting’s “2 weeks to get abs” challenge, which in reality is just not possible. However, people were insecure from the images they were seeing on tiktok and then even more disappointed when they were left with little to no results. It just goes to show how dangerous social media can be and how influential these creators are without even realizing it.
I think you made a great point on how social media can affect young girls body image. From personal experience, I was able to realize that social media has affected me and how I view myself. I found myself often comparing myself to people on social media platforms. I think it is important to be aware of everything that goes behind the screen. Most of the people on social media with a large amount of followers are not seen as normal people. I think a point that needs to be discussed is the hate that these “influencers” receive from their followers. As important as it is to be kind and patient to yourself when looking at these influences, it is important that other people are not tearing them down because they are real people as well.
One more thing I would like to bring up is that young men can be impacted by this issue so I think there is often a focus only on girls and how they can be impacted from social media. Young adults, regardless of their gender can all find themselves comparing and idolizing celebrities which is not healthy for one’s mental health.
https://www.newportacademy.com/resources/mental-health/teenage-body-dysmorphic-disorder/
I agree with your post and the consequences of all the editing done on so many pictures. There needs to be more educational initiatives to teach the younger generations about the how much editing is done on appearance and the work that is done. I think casual social media is a great idea, but for many celebrities, influencers, and others that most likely will not occur. At least if viewers are knowledgeable that the standards are unrealistic, it could help many. Only the perfect parts of life get shown on social media. This creates comparison that becomes unhealthy when one cannot achieve the life they see influencers living online.
The site attached contains an activity that someone created to complete with high school student to educated them about all these unrealistic standards. It could help students get in touch with their emotions and create healthier habits.
Besides from educating, another idea would be companies, such as Instagram, having to attach warnings on posts. The warning would tell viewers the photo has been edited or other options. These companies could also offer a survey when signing up where users can chose to not see anyone who shows unrealistic standards. This would allow parents to protect their younger children, because now kids are starting social media so so early on.
https://www.commonsense.org/education/lesson-plans/social-media-images-arent-always-real-but-their-impacts-are