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This paper explores the influence of self-image due to social media observed by teenagers all across the globe. While social media is not the only determinant to whether a teenager has low self-esteem, the idea is reinforced due to studies on the effects of adolescent brain development from social media. Serious impacts, including mental health and body disorders, can be linked to having low self-esteem. Increased use of photo-editing software such as Perfect365 allows teenagers to modify pictures of themselves into perfect physical characteristics.
As well as a self-image body disorder, Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) which is increasing with the youth due to social media exposure. Studies explore how these virtual images connect to ideas of fake “perfection” plastered over the internet. These studies also observe evidence for what causes these negative reactions towards self-image. The results suggest that unrealistic social media images are to blame for causing self-esteem issues, mental health illnesses, and body disorders among teenagers today.
Consider this scenario: It’s around midnight, Julia is laying in bed staring at her phone screen.
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Julia soon finds it impossible to shut the device off because she doesn’t want to miss anything posted on her Instagram timeline. As her fingers scroll a thousand miles a minute, she looks through the app to view new images from not only classmates but celebrities as well. There is an overwhelming amount of edited pictures, as well as unrealistic expectations for teenagers.
She swipes through these pictures and begins comparing herself to these random people. Julia starts to feel bad about herself, just what makes her feel this way? Is she suffering the psychological self-image effects of social media?
Julia is not the only teenager who can relate to having a low self-esteem after viewing images plastered over social media. In the modern age of younger generations, social media is to blame for promoting these unrealistic expectations to the youth. It is quite natural to compare yourself to others every day, resentment is a never-ending cycle, especially between adolescents. The problem of social media resides with forcing young kids to believe the only way of gaining success and happiness is to copy these idealistic pictures. Teenagers are vulnerable and exposed to anything and everything on social media. Not to mention it can be quite easy to feel trapped by these idealistic photos posted by Instagrammers’ who pose a luxurious life online. The majority of celebrities and influencers also create unrealistic pictures with photo-editing apps to cover any imperfections. If social media goes too far, it can produce severe or dangerous disorders stemming from low self-image.
Social media will proceed to grow and gain popularity as younger kids begin to use it. The minimum age to make an account on most social media sites is age thirteen, though there are many younger kids who lie about this. The number of young kids that sign up everyday signifies a dramatic rise in poor self-image as they develop into teenagers. Although it is inevitable that kids will use social media, it should be understood that consequences can be extremely severe, especially to the fragile self-image of an adolescent.
There are numerous factors that directly influence teenagers, although the impacts of social media are becoming extensive. These impacts psychologically alter sections of the brain linked with self-image. The brain is not fully developed during adolescence, which is why social media is molding the brain even more during the teenage years. Social media has the potential to alter development in these brain parts through unrealistic expectations.
With some simple taps of a screen, it is possible to find just about anything online. Anywhere at any time of the day, people can access the internet to connect with anyone around the world (Klein 2013). There is just about no boundary to what can be viewed on any social media platform. Social media includes, and is not limited to, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and YouTube, the list is never-ending. Social communication online is described as, “a media of intersection of every media and medium”, by Del Fresno Garcia et al. (2016, p. 25). Social media presents the ability to influence the self-worth and mental health of every user online. This can be especially detrimental if the teenager is on social media hours a day, constantly refreshing their timeline.
On many social media platforms, for example, Instagram, it is simple to identify the amount of “perfect-ness” that is possibly being viewed by every teenager. There are many Instagram stars who seem to live a luxurious and perfect life, online of course. It is very simple for one of these stars/influencers to post a picture of themselves showing a perfectly sculpted body, which is only attainable with hours of dedication. The problem with this is that teenagers feel they have to conform to these standards. This creates an illusion that something unrealistic should be the social “norm” to every teenager. The social media influencers are portrayed as, having an important power above others as they “selected, modified, and transmitted information/messages of their choosing to the wider public- in essence controlling both the means and the message” (Del Fresno Garcia et al. 2016). Social media images are chosen very carefully by these influencers as they want to maintain their luxurious and artificial life online.
To add to the large mix of social media influencers posting about their expensive possessions, teenagers today on the regular see various “Fitness Grammers” on Instagram. Certain influencers post about keeping a healthy lifestyle by excessively posting their rock hard perfectly sculpted bodies. They also teach kids that by going to exercise extremes and restricting their diet, they too can achieve the “perfect body”. Every day more research is being discovered as to how certain social media favorites continue impacting self-image of the younger generation.
For decades the mass media's have always used advertisements and commercials to specifically target women into fitting the ideal image. Although in the age of social media, the amount of men being targeted for their self-esteem is increasing just as much as it is for women. The negative impacts on self-image through the objectifying media show that body dissatisfaction is growing among both genders (Hamilton, Mintz, & Kashubeck-West, 2007). Images of toned, muscular men overflow timelines on every social media platform nowadays, leaving men feeling vulnerable in their own skin as well. It is not surprising that these images affect self-image and the dissatisfaction of a teenager’s appearance.
A study that has particularly gone over the evaluations of body dissatisfaction was done by S. Tucci and J. Peters at The Universidad de Liverpool. During this study, forty-two female students were shown models with thin-ideal physiques in magazines and social media photos. The results of this study concluded that women had an increased feeling for fitting this body image and did not have a positive opinion towards their bodies when exposed to the images (Tucci & Peters, 2008).
It is well known that the media has placed a large target on women to have a perfect physique. Today, the media has also turned men into victims for being buff, toned, and having a towering frame of pure muscle. Sarah Grogan from Staffordshire University in the UK suggests that in recent years “there has been a growing preoccupation with weight and body image in men, which parallels this increase ‘visibility’ of the male body”.
A very similar study was performed by K. Harrison and J. Cantor to analyze if ideal-physique images impacted men the same as the images affected the women. They observed that the men who were given a magazine and shown images of lean men did not react positively. Viewing fitness magazines predicts an urge for thinness (Harrison & Cantor, 1997). There was a report of “lower body esteem, lower self-esteem, view their own body as less attractive, and experience greater concern regarding fitness, weight, and muscularity”, after being shown the images (Hobza & Rochlem, 2009). It is explained that just as magazines greatly play a part in one’s self-image, online images show how they affect one’s self-esteem.
Both studies on men and women concluded that the influence of social media created pressure and promotion of unrealistic body image and expectations.
Every teenager is going through a transformation in their life. They are continually thinking and excessively worrying about multiple factors. These factors can include, friendships, family complications, the pressure to exceed in school and numerous other reasons. The last thing they need is added stress from viewing unrealistic images online. Today, it is frequent for influencers using photo-editing apps, including Perfect365 which has recently gained an attraction to young people trying to correct imperfections. Editing software is one and the same, all possessing the ability to manipulate an image of themselves to match an ideal image. Online images appear to create even larger problems ever since the use of face and body editing apps. The way these apps affect teenagers forces them to feel inferior to social media stars and influencers.
This concept of unrealistic perfection is highly prevalent on social media with the pressure to compete through modifying images. Editing software products exhibit advertising approaches that target the younger generations into looking a certain way. They promote the user-friendliness of their software and how it provides astonishing results to ‘fix’ makeup, hair, acne, facial structure, and all body shapes. It gives teenagers the choice of virtually changing any physical features on themselves they disapprove of.
Professor Sarah Grogan, from Staffordshire University’s School of Health Psychology in the UK, published a book, Body Image: Understanding Body Dissatisfaction in Men, Women, and Children. In this book, she has highlighted some important points about how these modified images influence self-image. It is common that we seek target assessments of our capacities and frames of mind. At the point when unfit to assess ourselves straightforwardly, we try to fulfill this requirement for self-assessment through examination with other individuals. Striving to accomplish this feeling, the self-image becomes fragile between all ages, especially targeting the younger generation.
The adolescent years are a stage of development for mental health and body image disorders. It is during the ages of fourteen all the way to the twenties that young adults will start to exhibit symptoms of mental and body illnesses. Reasons for development are a combination of biological, psychological and environmental factors that have the ability to change one’s progression. Both mental and body health concerns can be a result of excessive exposure to social media images. The teenage years are a stage of vulnerability to these psychological shifts, especially modern youth when social media is added.
A study conducted by Yvonne Kelly et al. was done through The UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), which sampled kids born in September of 2000 through January 2002. The samples were random and made up of ethnically diverse members, simply having age in common. Parents and their teenagers were interviewed in-home and completed private questionnaires on a computer. These surveys went through topics concerning social media use, including mental health, online harassment, self-esteem and body image. The study used data from a broad range of the population to investigate these four ideas and how they link to social media use.
The results of the study confirmed that higher hours of social media daily in both genders appeared to boost the development of high depressive symptoms. There was no proof of boys and girls acting differently on social media, therefore findings show how both genders are affected with depressive symptoms. Previous research suggested otherwise, stating that girls at the start of adolescence who used social media longer adopted reduced mental health later on in life (C.L. Booker et al. 2018).
Although the MCS found many outcomes, they were unable to identify various factors that could additionally play a role in their findings. These factors include how much emotional investment was put online, how teenagers ‘fear of missing out’ affected results, and what times of the day they were most active.
This study not only shows the importance of how social media is affecting teenagers, but it also joins the concepts of depressive symptoms and how they relate back to self-image. The findings agree with the idea of regulating stricter social media use laws as well. It is clear to understand that countless young adults struggle with their bodies. This research supports the idea of creating a “broader societal shift” from social media to resolve these negative feelings that develop from overexposure to distorted unrealistic image.
There is a high rate of women from studies who seem to develop body disorders from the result of decreasing self-esteem including Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Katharine A. Phillips published a book, The Broken Mirror: Understanding and Treating Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Her book analyses and summarizes the cause and effects of how BDD starts, especially among the younger generation.
Everyone with BDD has some aspect of their appearance that they somehow consider ugly, unattractive, or 'not right.' Everybody is worried — thinking and worrying excessively about their body. Because of their concern, everyone is distressed or does not function as well as they might. The details vary from person to person, but all share these basic themes (Phillips, 1998).
There are many signs whether or not a person is suffering from BDD. These include having notable stress over what they look like, always trying to fix their flaws which exhibit addicting habits, consistently checking what they look like, and attempting to cover up any areas they dislike of themselves.
In Phillips research, she wanted to study whether there is a BDD relation between men and women. There is a large presumption that women, who are regularly more focused on their features, are to be more affected by BDD than men.
For BDD cases that are moderate to severe, Phillips found that “out of the several hundred people I’ve seen, 51% have been men”. (155-156). This supports the claim that both genders appear to equally be affected by societal pressures found on social media.
In Psychotherapist Susie Orbach’s book, Bodies, she highlights how body-image is socially conditioned in the media. She does not specifically call out social media but instead goes over the effects that online fabrication and media has on young adults.
All industries, including “diet, food, style, cosmetic surgery, pharmaceutical, and media” represent our bodies as needing to be improved to be seen as perfect. They give us an idea that “our bodies’ capacities are limited only by our purse and determination.” (Orbach, 2009).
She also mentions how today everyone not only competes with other people, but they compete with photo-shopped and modified images. These images are artificially produced to show the idealistic ideas of what every person should strive to be. Young adults feel they need to resemble what they observe in photos.
A study was done by Kathryn Bell at Bridgewater State University on forty-seven female participants part of a sorority. The girls were aged eighteen to twenty-three, freshmen to seniors in college. This study was done to figure out the ideas young adults have on body image and how it relates back to social media. These questions were very detailed, they were asked as followed, “Do respondents feel pressure from social media to change their body or appearance? How do respondents view their own bodies in relation to what they see on social media? Do respondents experience negative body image when exposed to social media images and influences? How aware are respondents of social media images and influences in their everyday lives?”
To answer these questions, Bell found that in her data, 72.5 percent stated they compare their own appearance to social media images. When asked what they thought about their looks, 47 percent of respondents felt the same about their looks while 36 percent felt worse. Therefore only 17 percent felt a positive feeling towards their bodies after spending time on social media. After viewing photos of idealistic women from Instagram, 75 percent stated they felt worse about themselves.
When asked what influences them the most on social media, the data stated “67.5 percent were interested in the clothes they were wearing, 80 percent were interested in their hair, 75 percent looked at how fit the person was, 70 percent looked at the person’s body shape, 90 percent were interested in their look and style, and 87.5 percent looked at the person’s attractiveness.” (Bell, 2016). She concluded at the end of her study that the hypothesis of how social media causes negative body image/dissatisfaction was mostly supported. Although there were some things that the study was unable to find, such as needing more evidence figuring out why participants experience these negative reactions.
The findings of how BDD is growing to become a significant difficulty among teenagers relates back to poor self-image. Social media displays a simple platform for this disorder to emerge from, due to the number of unrealistic photos continually posted.
In order to obtain comprehensive knowledge of how social media affects the self-image of teenagers, every aspect must be researched. These factors include and are not limited to, age, gender, and particularly time spent on social media. The studies analyzed negative reactions when young adults were exposed to unrealistic, modified images found on social media. With additional research on these results, it will be clearer to understand why teenagers feel this way. For the purpose of promoting a secured setting for adolescents, families, schools, and other organizations must receive a greater knowledge of the consequences that come with social media usage. Stricter laws should be in place, such as tightly regulating social media use, proving every user’s age, and parents granting permission to sign up. If these methods are implemented, social media can become a beneficial environment for modern youth and young adults alike.
Social Media Influences on Society. (2021, Feb 17). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/social-media-influences-on-society-essay
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