Social Media’s Impact on Youth
Does social media and the influence of others negatively affect the way teens view themselves? Many young people of from this generation struggle with body image and self-esteem. Unfortunately, this does not get easier with the change from grade school to high school. This time in a young person’s life is very difficult on its own.
Changes in friends, the responsibilities of high school, and the expectations from parents can be very overwhelming. These challenges coupled with the constant pressure from today’s culture, makes it very hard for someone to keep a positive self-image. There are many outside forces that can influence a teen’s ability to have a healthy self-esteem. Youth are often very impressionable. It has become a common practice as a teen to point negative things out about oneself and compare oneself to others. With social media being a huge aspect of today’s culture, it is not hard for it to have a negative effect on the youth of society. Due to the standards of today’s culture and increase in social media's pervasiveness and the resulting decrease in self-image, youth in today’s society are becoming more dependent on the opinion of others and relying on cultural shifts to define themselves.
Social media is everywhere. Most people have at least 1 or more social media accounts. “Around 81% of America is on social media.” Social media can be used in a positive manner, but it has its downside. With the ability to post and share anything comes a problem, the viewer. The viewer could see something that immediately can affect them in a negative manner. When young girls see what are considered to be “the picture perfect girl”, it can place negative thoughts in the minds of the girls in this generation. They get an idea in their head of how to look, how to dress, and who to be. Teens may look at themselves and “start to compare themselves with other people or media images.” The impact is limitless considering “these days the impossible standards are set much closer to home, not only by celebrities and models but by classmates and friends.” When the people that these girls find themselves jealous of are the people they have around them constantly, friendships can be destroy friendships due to envy. When it comes to idolizing models and celebrities, that a young girl can often lose sight of who she really is by trying to build herself into somebody else. Girls worship these people for the perfect ideals that they see. Social media builds this platform. What people post is absolutely intentional, all the way down to the filter on their pictures. Every post has a purpose to make their life look immensely better, “with social media, teens can curate their lives, and the resulting feeds read like highlight reels.” When scrolling through social media one sees the best of what the user decides to share. It is easy to lose sight of this idea and to get caught up in idolizing who the viewer is seeing. Jealousy is a natural response, and when the teen cannot achieve what they are idolizing, it can create a negative impact. Something else that is carried out through social media that can affect teen girls today negatively is exclusion. If a girl is sitting home alone scrolling through her phone and sees a group of girls together engaging in a fun activity, that can certainly put a damper on the way she views herself. She will wonder what is wrong her appearance and personality, due to for her lack of a invitation. Social media can absolutely affect the way a teen sees themselves and ultimately lead to the loss in self confidence and self- esteem, which causes an overall poor self image. Although, some people could argue that social media also has a positive effect on our society today.
It is not surprising that “7 in 10 girls believe that they are not good enough or don’t measure up in some way, including their looks, performance in school and relationships with friends and family members.”. When it comes to teenage girls, a lot of their actions are based off the way they believe boys will react. Teenage girls constantly are trying to impress boys. Relationships as a adolescent can shape your self-esteem. When young, being in a relationship is so important that some girls would take negative behavior and abuse from boys without saying a word. The impact of these negative relationships can really hurt the way a girl views herself worth. Most girls struggle with achieving a certain number on a scale to look perfect. The number is not the problem. It is simply how they view the number. Society today gives teens this standard of what is pretty, and which absolutely includes what size is desirable. It was once considered a beautiful thing to be a little fuller. Nobody wanted to be too skinny. Now, being thin is exactly what girls want. With this shift in society, girls are always being pressured to not only be smallest self but their best self in general. Teens would not feel so negative about themselves without social media constantly showing them this way of thinking, “regardless of our personal values, we base most of our self-esteem on the fulfillment of the dominant values of our culture.” Self-image has seemed to prove itself as more of a collaborative idea than a individual one. The image one decides to see in them self tends to fall due to the pressure of what they think they should be, from what they are taught is perfect.
When trying to fit in and stay on top of society these days, shopping is defiantly a method that a large numbers us to try to keep up with each other. Clothing company’s today often use very skinny models to sell their clothes. These girls look flawless and the clothes always seem to flow just right on them. The girls that see this want to look as amazing as the models that they idolize do so, “girls feel if they lose weight and get skinnier, they could become like their favorite fashion model.”. The sad thing is that nothing could be further from the truth. These models are everywhere, on the tv, in advertisements, and all over social media. These girls have “created a highly-charged 24/7 cycle of unrealistic body images,” that are just too hard to shut out. When seeing how perfect these models look in the clothes, young girls order them for themselves in hopes that they could look just a perfect as the model. This is often where the utter disappointment comes into play. When ordering clothing, a girl might have a perfect picture in her head of how exactly it’s going to look, only to be shattered by the fact that “it didn’t hug the model’s thighs there” or “the top wasn’t tight on the model here.” This is what causes the shame of imperfection, which is a curse on the young girls today. If these girls didn’t become slave to the idea of looking exactly like today’s cultural standard of beauty, they might not lose their self-esteem. Unfortunately, this loss of self-esteem is nearly unavoidable. The clothing industry and the modeling industry are impacting the way young girls view themselves as acceptable in today’s society.
It is easy to say that self-image and self-esteem are both very delicate things. Ones self-image can be impacted by a wide range of things. The stress and pressure of maintaining yourself, and being your best self can be a lot to handle as a teenager. The impact that social media, relationships, models, and the clothing industry have on a young girl can be very negative and impact the way she thinks about herself completely.
“Culture influences young people's self-esteem: Fulfillment of value priorities of other
individuals important to youth.” sciencedaily.com. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/
2014/02/140224081027.htm. Accessed 07 October 2018.
This source talks about how social media has a huge effect on teenage boys and girls and how social media makes teenagers self-esteem very low. This source gives details on the statists of how social media affects body image. The author of this source is CNRS, I believe this source is credible because it gives good information about body image and social media and it gives the date the source was released.