Impact of Social Media on Physical Appearance Essay

We live in an era ruled by social media, primarily when it comes to teenagers, social media is used for everything. From communicating with family and friends to being used as a news outlet, and even advertisement for business and companies. This article is titled “Social Media: What's Not to Like,” written by Alison Pearce Stevens. The topic of this essay is the effect social media can have on teenagers. Social media, on one hand, can be used as a great way to share with the world and boost teens’ self-esteem. On the other hand, social media can be used as a place for bullying, body shaming and can cause depression or even suicide in teens.

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.

Furthermore, media surrounds teenage girls in today’s culture. It is impossible to escape the sight of media. The media’s constant idealistic beauty is ever present to a vast amount of self-conscious girls. This image of beauty causes girls to have low self-esteem (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar). Media defining this perfect body image causes many adolescent girls to feel dissatisfied with their bodies and become depressed. “Viewing ultra-thin or average-size models led to decreases in both body satisfaction and self-esteem in adolescent girls aged eleven to sixteen, with changes in self-esteem fully mediated by changes in body satisfaction” (Clay, Vignoles, and Dittmar).

The media plays a huge part in the lives of teenage girls, from cheesy teen fashion magazines to model runway fashion shows, teens are constantly put under stress to look, dress, act, and even feel a certain way about themselves, but how can this actually affect them in the short term and the long term? Studies by Dr Nadia Micali, of the Institute of Child Health, University College, London show that up to one in ten girls from age 12-19 had an eating disorder, the pressures of modern day vain have almost consumed the mental health of a whole generation. "I know this is going to sound weird," Cassie confesses, "but when I eat too much junk food, I'm so guilty I actually hate myself. I'm the kind of person who has plenty

Social media creates an ideal body image in an adolescent’s mind that affects them in various ways. Having an ideal body image can lower self-esteem in some adolescents’ creating eating disorders, and this idea of getting plastic surgery as they get older. Social media is steadily increasing and has heavily influenced adolescent’s to be more aware of their body figure. As a result, many adolescent’s have developed low self-esteem due to the fact that social media continues promoting fit women and creating the idea that women need to be thin to be loved or accepted by society; this can cause harm to adolescent’s because they feel the need to fit in to society.

The subject of this article are young girls, mainly who are in their teenage years, but also the parents of teenage girls. However, anyone can be impacted and learn from this article. This article questions why society drills the idea of thinness into the minds of people, and every reader can take a different stance and have a different opinion on the issue. Some people may take a stance and say that individuals, themselves, are the only influence on their body image. However, others may take the stance and say that society, as a whole, has a huge influence on an individual and their body image. The author of this article, Erica Goode, includes many quotes from parents of teenage girls, who feel as if they need to go to extreme measures to fit in with society. In this case, the author is creating the stance that society plays a role when it comes to influencing an individual. Goode also provides many

Research shows that over 80 percent of 10-year-old girls fear becoming “fat” (NYC). Young girls are not satisfied by their body image and it is causing many issues. Even though young girls may subject themselves to body image issues, social media destroys girl’s self-worth because of the fashion industry and prolonged time and use on social media.

The media is questioned if their presenting a healthy structure of body image for teenagers. The Majority of images portrayed on social media consists of slim, bright and/or flawless people which is known to impact teenagers personally and will feel different due to their difference in weight and appearance. This preview will indicate whether most body images shown online stand as a respectable size to teenagers viewing the image or impersonates a low point of view for the young audience. Over the decades’ social media has produced a substantial indication of how your body must look. The issue is where if this depiction is a healthy or unhealthy circumstance for the teenage perception.

Instagram has been introduced to the community around 6 years ago as a social networking app for sharing photos and videos from smartphones. Along with the growth of technology and the Internet, Instagram is now gradually become more and more popular in many social media websites, especially for teenagers. However, many types of research and studies state that Instagram may cause several negative effects on the individuals who use them usually. As the report “Instagram Is Killing Teen Girls’ Self-Esteem”, the author states that almost every girl teenager feels isolated and unsatisfied with what they have. Indeed, they often feel envious and have inferiorities when they see someone have a beautiful dress or living a luxury life (Kohli). Moreover, Instagram users often compare their lives to other people on social media and try to build the perfect platform on social media. If teenagers overuse Instagram for most of their time, it may lower the self-esteem of teenagers, damage the body image, lifestyles, or even affect the mental systems in life satisfaction.

For many decades’ research have been developed around the issue of adolescent girls and the women on the desire of being thin (Bell&Dittmar, 2011). With all of the social networking sites of today adolescents are no stranger to the latest technology. According to journalism.org Snapchat has been the youngest “news users” 82% of its users are between the ages of 18-29 (Shearer & Gottfried, 2017). Social media has a different effect on body image on adolescent girls than mass media; in print media with magazines the thin-model and being thin is the main focus for adolescent girls and women (Martin & Gentry, 1997; Dohut & Tiggemann 2006, Goodman 2002, Veldhuis et. al 2014). With social media, individuals can {created a bond with new people made

Having social media in today's generation has become one of the most popular sources of communication. Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter have a huge impact on young teens. Since social media is a way to network with people and friends, provide entertainment, sharing opinion or comments, etc., most often times it is the first and last thing the younger generation would see right before bed or when they wake up. For example, Instagram is a way to share photos about oneself or about anything. Most people would post "trendy" picture of what a perfect body might be or what is perceived as beautiful. But what teenagers might not know is not everything you see on social media is true. Pictures may be deceptive. These pictures have provided unrealistic standards as to what is considered beautiful in today’s society. By establishing unattainable standards of beauty and bodily perfection, the media drive ordinary people to dissatisfaction with their body images like what movie I will be talking about in this essay, “The DUFF.” The dissatisfaction can results in resorts to drastic measures, and even disorders of behavior, as people try to achieve these unreachable goals.

There is no denying that social media: Instagram and Tumblr, has a significant influence on all of us. The current effects of social media have increased dramatically among young women aged between 15 and 25. As stated in the study by (Grabe, Ward, & Hyde, 2008) that the high exposure to social media portraying the thin-ideal body may be linked to body image disturbance in young women. They used a meta-analysis examined experimental and correlation studies testing the links between media exposure to young women's body dissatisfaction and the unconscious behavior towards having a thin ideal body. The results by (Grabe, Ward, & Hyde, 2008) support the claim that high exposure to social media images depicting the thin-ideal body is related to

Social Media has a huge impact on a teens life since they are bombarded with the pressures of buying new devices and apps, thus affecting the way teens represent themselves on social media. In the article, It states how teens are driven to compete against each other by, trying to have best social media feed. “Parents wonder if their children’s constant use of Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat is healthy. Teenagers talk about the pressure to post the perfect photo or compete with the perfect lives their peers present on the Internet.” (Baltimore Sun, para. 2). The pressures of wanting to post the perfect pictures of their lives on social media, takes a toll on the teens when they are using it. Instead of posting what is true to that person, they are competing to have the best pictures and the most followers, which causes them to lose their true selves/identity.

For some teens, striving for perfection has led to harming their own health and wellbeing such as living with depression and suicide. Teenagers today are relying on what they see in ads, T.V., magazines and on the internet for their input on appearances, the way they think not only comes from media sources, but from family and friends.

In today’s society, the public is exposed to technology at even younger ages than ever before. Everywhere you go these days you see kids even as little as three holding their parent’s phones or even their own, watching videos or playing games. But as said in the article Does Social media impact on body image by Philippa Roxby, as kids start becoming teenagers their technological uses advance and they start to rely on social media sites for new sources of communication, and their main channel to the outside world. Based on studies conducted by psychologists they have come up with a conclusion that social media has a direct relationship to body image concerns. I believe that in today’s society we should focus on promoting self-confidence as most of the adolescents have a very low assurance of their own bodies. Although a study conducted in the article The Upside of Selfies: Social media isn’t all bad for kids by Kelly Wallace says that a survey which resulted in 52% of the teens saying that social media positively influences them. Even though social media platforms have some beneficial aspects such as they make people want to go on diets, exercise, and eating healthy, the teenagers don’t really look/understand the negative aspects of it. The impacts that are carried with social media are mostly negative such as fancying teenagers to lose confidence in themselves and has become a toxic mirror to them. The visual platforms impact