A Study Conducted By Greenwood

When scrolling through your Instagram feed or watching Snapchat stories of classmates and friends, it can be very difficult and sometimes impossible to not feel jealous or discouraged. These days, teens post nearly every aspect of their lives on social media. You see everything from what someone ate for breakfast, what workout they did that day, to what cute new outfit they have on for their fancy family dinner that night. A wide range of pressures arises with social media usage. Teens feel they always need to be available, many gain reassurance from likes and shares, and they are faced with the struggle of keeping up with the constant image of a “perfect life”. This is very dangerous because many teens are experiencing discomfort in their own skin when they compare themselves to others. It is difficult not to judge yourself and others when you are constantly viewing what your classmates, friends, and celebrities are doing. When interviewing a friend, Brayden Xilas who has been personally impacted by social media, she said “There has become an unspoken competition for teens to prove they have the best life through social media”. Friends and classmates are constantly trying to “one up” each other which causes a lot of stress for people to always be doing something worthy of sharing on social media.

Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat are the ones I use and consider social media because you can share information freely no matter the distance. I often use them for as an outlet for entertainment, online interactions, personal branding, and updates on what is happening in today’s society. On Instagram, users share photos of their lifestyle and put a caption to fit it. For my use, I often share post photos on special events like birthdays, family/friend gatherings, and sometimes show off things that I have accomplished. In the Times article, “The Secret Language of Girls on Instagram,” written by Rachel Simmons, she states, “Instagram lets users share their photos, and “like” and comment on their friends’. The competition for “likes” encourages creativity in young users, who can use filters and other devices to spruce up their images. And its simplicity – it’s just pictures, right? -- comforts parents haunted by the cyberbullying they hear about on Facebook and Twitter.” The social norm for teenagers on Instagram is credible enough to know that users love posting about themselves. Although this may be true, I am guilty enough to say I do the same. For example, I post a lot of photos about winning awards and pictures of me going places; basically showing off what I do here and there. Myself and the majority of other Instagram users use Instagram because they receive the attention that

Millenials enjoy having a good self image, but more importantly, being accepted by society. These people use Facebook, and other social media sites, to look important and gain self-esteem by getting as many likes as possible on a photo. These photos posted could create an unrealistic portrait of that person, argues Soraya Mehdizadeh, but could this also be a way for people to express their identity, counters Alex Lambert? Soraya Mehdizadeh and Alex Lambert argue their reasons for why or why not social media may be narcissistic. It is a controversial subject because it can be hard to tell if this so called narcissism is a social norm now or if it is simply narcissism in itself. It is under psychological discussion because some psychologists argue it could be a disorder due to the fact that some people may be obsessed with social media and promoting a positive self image, so others think highly of them. Throughout the articles, the pros and cons of social media are weighted, and it seems that social media facilitates narcissisms because millenial’s are so prone to using it and older people only use it to keep connections with friends.

In the essay “Are We Slaves to Our Online Selves?”, Jules Evens explains how social media can cause us to put ourselves ‘out there’ to get approval from others. Evens writes about teenagers and how “They feel publicly shamed, desecrated, permanently damage.” by social media. Gaining self-confidence has become very difficult for many people because of the way social media can affect how one sees themselves. For teenagers, its especially hard.

Many adolescents consider social media as a way to belong in accordance with societal expectations. With the development of the first recognisable social media site, Six Degrees, in 1997, several other sensations have been created. This site enabled users to upload a profile and make friends with others, beginning the social media revolution. During its peak in the 2000s, social media’s prominence occurred with the creation of several popular sites.

This applies in a way to all users of social media, but it is exemplified within the generation of digital natives. This generation has almost wholly combined their online and offline identities with each other(Palfrey & Gasser, 2008, p.20). The negative aspect of the merging of identities is the linking of self image one applies to the status of their online persona. Teenagers have become extremely sensitive to the acceptance they receive from their friend on social media even though some of the people following them have never met them personally. Although teenagers have always faced problems from peer groups in forming their self image social media has increased the size of the teenagers peer pool while adding the aspect of anonymity to the

This article is written by Richard Maxwell, Ph.D., Who is a political economist of social media and Toby Miller, Ph.D., Who is an interdisciplinary social scientist. Maxwell and Miller focus on the psychological effect of social media on people but especially teens. " A vital characteristic of contemporary teen identity is making a name for yourself via numbers of “Likes,” “Tweets,” and “selfies.” according to the article written by Maxwell and Miller, "The need for self-display and connectedness is so powerful for some that psychologists have a name for the fear of disconnection—nomophobia" (Maxwell, Miller) This article goes in depth in psychological fears and anxiety that are caused by social media. The information provided on this page

Mysko warns that, while social media gives young people—especially girls—the feedback and validation they crave, it can also “serve as a catalyst for more insecurity.”

The present study further examines the thought behind the perfect social media profile by internalizing the images portrayed by adolescents. According to this study during the adolescent period, children experience a spotlight effect or imaginary audience mindset in which they believe their peers are constantly examining their actions and behaviors. This egocentric time period is heightened by the frequent use of Facebook and other social media outlets. Similarly to the previous study by Vogel et al (2014), the researchers discovered that they compared their behaviors and actions to peers by making either upward or downward comparisons. However, this study takes this thought process a step further by examining the subjects behavior alteration

With all of the technology and social websites in todays society, being famous is no longer a “big deal” (https://soratothamax.wordpress.com/2014/12/18/music-2014-charts/). Social networks such as Facebook,

Quite a number of social scientific researches in the communication mainstream are developing at a faster rate, particularly researches with a purpose of determining the relationship between the social networking sites (the use of Instagram) and narcissism. It is therefore quite in order to explicitly establish an appropriate technique of variable determination and hypothesis testing to effectively address the concern of the relationship between narcissism and the frequency of active usage of Instagram (Ames & Anderson, 2006). Most previous researches have presented an objective opinion that a variety of social networking behaviors conceptualizes the notion of Narcissism. The concept of gender disparity and age differences have tremendously influenced the findings of most previous researches (Jayson, 2009).

Many people have equated social media to merely a worldwide popularity contest. In his article, Curtis Silver quips, “Up until about five years ago I only had a handful of people I would consider friends. These people knew me well, and I them. These were the kinds of people to help a guy move on short notice or jump your car in the rain. Now, times have changed and considering all the social networks I 'm attached to, I have thousands of friends. I 'm the most popular person in the world!” (Silver 444) Silver’s statement is a great representation of today’s social media mentality. There are People that actually pride themselves on having a surplus of social media friends and multiple accounts. Some that would even put some celebrity’s fan base to shame. Silver equates friendship to its philosophical meaning, which says a

Social media increases strong traits of low self-esteem in many different age groups, by unachievable physical appearance, the negative messages media leaves, and never being able to achieve a persistence private life. There is a continuing cause of low self-esteem since it was created, girls and boys always having posts, comments, and pictures weighing on their shoulders. Social media as defined by the Oxford Dictionary as, “Social media noun [treated as sing. or pl.] websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking” was created for the soul content of creating and

“The flip side of Internet Fame” is an essay written by Jessica Bennett. In this essay, Jessica Bennett talks about our modern culture and the effects of public shaming. She starts the essay by using “Star Boy” as an example. She then states, “Among the generation that’s been reared online, stories like this are becoming more common” (Bennett 90). As a person who uses technology in everyday life, I can strongly agree that public shaming is becoming a big issue. Some people might see it as entertainment, but the victims of public shaming see it as humiliation and harassment. Public shaming can spread through many ways, such as the use of technology, online videos and certain websites.

In today's culture, social media stars have a more significant influence on the general public than celebrities themselves. Many of which are in well-known and public relationships with other social media stars. For instances, Liza Koshy and David Dobrik, Pewdiepie and his famous beauty-guru girlfriend Marzia are just some examples. The latter’s relationship has led them to land several ad campaigns and projects (Shields). One thing social media stars share in common whether they are on YouTube, Instagram or Facebook is to declare their affections, share details of their relationships on such platforms with their fans, who have