Negative Effects Of Social Media On Self-Esteem

In today's generation, most young, female, teenagers have problems with the way they look, their appearance, or their bodies. Females have a lower self esteem already without society and social medias pressure to conform. Self esteem is a realistic respect for or favorable impression of oneself; self-respect. Males generally have higher self esteem level than females, therefore, more adolescent females struggle with eating disorders, self esteem issues, and often thoughts of suicide. Research and evidence suggests that a majority of young females lack of self esteem comes from social media and society's pressure to have a perfect body, or appearance and if females do not then we should conform to the standards placed before females by social media and society. In my opinion being a teenage girl in today's generation is so hard because so much is expected from adolescent females. Young females are expected to achieve beauty, intelligence, and social standards in a world that is constantly tearing down every movement women make toward independence. Social media and society does put pressure on young women to look a certain way, and if they do not achieve this look like the world portrays as beauty then their self esteem begins to drop in young females.

Clarissa Silva article in the Huffington Post delves into social media’s impact on self-esteem. As a behavioral scientist, her interest in the matter relates to her field. She also gets the help of other experts Dr. Jennifer Rhodes, Natalia Lusinski, and Dr. Suzana Flores to help with her research. Silva states that “social media is linked to higher levels of loneliness, envy, anxiety, depression, narcissism and decreased social skills" (1). Then outlines her research findings using rhetorical appeals.

This paper explores two sources of information that discuss social media’s effect on one’s self-esteem. The sources used are “Social Comparison, Social Media, and Self-Esteem”, an article printed in “Psychology of Popular Media” written by Vogel et al. (2014) and “Facebook Envy: How the Social Network Affects our Self-Esteem” an internet article written by Andrea Shea (2004) found at http://www.wbur.org/2013/02/20/facebook-perfection. The sources share comparative information on the widespread use of social networking sites (SNSs), how it is used, and few similarities of how SNSs affect one’s self-esteem. The sources, however, vary in how the information and data was obtained to reach its conclusion. This paper will examine the similarities and differences of each source in relation to social media and self-esteem.

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.”

Would you consider yourself an important person? The majority of young people in today’s society would say that they indeed are important, as opposed to the very few numbers of people who felt this way in the 1950’s, according to Jean Twenge in her book Generation Me. Debora Lima agrees with Twenge and suggests that this is caused by social media in her article “Social media plays large part in self image.” Cathy Payne also agrees as she explains the inflation of cosmetic surgeries in her article “Botox or your bills? Plastic surgery wins out.” Twenge, Payne, and Lima all agree that there is a change in self-image in today’s young society, yet they all argue different sub points on this subject. Overall, there has been a noticeable change in self-image.

Evidently, social media is taking its toll on adolescents and distorting their views of reality and themselves. It is disheartening to see young people agonize over how many ‘likes’ they got on their post and if it does not surpass how many they hoped for, they feel unaccepted and worthless, especially females. Dr. Steiner-Adair notices that “Girls are socialized more to compare themselves to other people… to develop their identities, so it makes them more vulnerable to the downside of all this” (Ehmke). A long time ago, girls would give each other a hard time in school, but they did not have to deal with it at home. However, that has changed recently due to social media. All of the judging on social media lowers their self-esteem, and according to Sherman, it is because

There is no doubt that social media and the internet is an insanely popular way of communicating among our friends and family, but with so much time spent on social media, there are bound to be effects that can be felt by all of us. Big social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat have such a widespread user base that the amount of time spent on these platforms by all users is most likely an unbelievable number. A lot of people may think that social media is a waste of time and has addictive qualities, and has mostly negative impacts on its users; Social media can also be used in a variety of ways that are more beneficial and not time wasting.

Even though social media allows social interactions between family and friends most believe that it should keep them from feeling depressed. Without thinking about this American dream, they paint for families and friends, think realistically most families are waiting for you to mess up or fail in life and being associated with you on social media is just a way for them to keep up with you. Social media has been becoming more useful; it's been changing a lot of families in a very negative way (Medrano 1). This proves that since social media had been made into a big deal today its ruining almost everything and everyone that is associated with it. Even though it can be used to keep in touch it’s terrible because it causes stress on people by making them believe everything they post must be perfect or their family member will talk badly about them. It also keeps competition between friends and that just ruin their relationship maybe even be the cause of those friends never talking again. Watching other family member and friend’s social media account can make someone feel less of person or make them feel like they didn’t accomplish enough because the other is posting so much successful stuff. Following those family and friends on social media brings nothing but headaches and depression.

Modern society is in grave danger because of the media. Different forms of media have emerged over time, including newspaper, books, radio, television, and now the internet. Numerous studies have proven a link between poor self-image and the media, and this trend has worsened with time. It seems the more access individuals have to the rest of the world, the more self-obsessed they become, and the results can be deadly. Many psychologists have discovered a connection between media (social media primarily) and one’s self-image. Unfortunately, this connection is often a negative one, as social media has been claimed to be “more addictive than alcohol or tobacco” (Fox, para 1). There are several factors that contribute to this trend of social media negatively impacting body image, many of which are scientific and should potentially be treated as a disease like other addictions are. Society’s “ideal image” of an individual has evolved as social media has become increasingly popular, which is damaging individuals’ self-images and causing body dysmorphia in some cases. Social media and exposure to other factors such as reality television should be limited in order to prevent unrealistic body images.

Firstly, we need to understand what social media is. From a broader and vague perspective, social media can be referred as the wide variety of mobile and Internet-based services that allow users to contribute to online exchanges, join online communities, or contribute user-created content. Although social has helped us learn more and educate ourselves on many things, it has a lot of mental effects on our bodies. It has detrimental effects on our wellbeing (Bányai et al. 52). Social media is a platform that has an increasingly significant impact not only on our mental health but also multiple facets of modern life beyond online communication. This platform is misleading the teens and the young adults because they are the most who spent a lot of time socializing online and doing all manner of things thus exposing themselves to the risk of developing the mental problems. They get all negative effects that are associated with social media because they spent most of their time online. Although social media has more good than harm, we also need not spend most of our time online as this will bring us many mental problems that can affect our entire life. Social media has vast negative effects on oneself, specifically on depression, addiction, self-esteem, and confidence, therefore we need to regulate the usage of it to avoid these problems in the future.

As of the 3rd season of 2017, Facebook has 2.07 billion users, an astounding accomplishment for Mark Zuckerberg. But what were his intentions when he was creating the globally-known website? Of course, his goal was allowing people to keep in touch with friends and family, as well as meeting new people over the World Wide Web. But did social media addiction or cyber bullying ever cross his mind as factors that could give people a negative impact on his site? Maybe so, but there are also educational purposes that can help students do better in school on social media sites. Does that mean that these impacts cancel each other out? In this essay, I am going to justify both sides of the fence when it comes down to the use of social media and the impact on its users.

Over the past decade social media has been used as an outlet for self-expression. Why do people use social media to express themselves? Social media have caused negative effects on self-expression. Social media can alter people’s thoughts and feelings. Social media reduces people’s urge to write down their thoughts because they feel they will be criticized by what they wrote. Social media have also decreased social skills over time. Social media can be used as a voice and it affects the way some people express themselves.

Are you addicted to social media or technology? Recently in class we have discussed the technological advancement and social media usage impacting us in our society in both a positive and negative way. Teens in this generation who spend an average amount on their screen activates are more likely to be unhappy, have mental health issues, and less critical thinking skills.

Games aren 't only distracting, but people get addicted to them. High schoolers have parents around which sometimes helps with them not playing too much, however when kids that are obsessed with games go off to college or whatever there isn’t anyone there to tell them to start and they just play all day. This can also affect the people around someone addicted to video games. Screens draw attention, so if someone is constantly playing video games this distracts others and they may end up watching for long periods of time. Video games are fun, but they are too addicting and distract others.

As time has progressed, social media and the internet have advanced significantly, becoming easier to access with a touch of a button. Our society has become reliant on social media, and today’s younger generation cannot avoid using it in their everyday lives. However, these advancements come with costs. These effects are neither completely bad or good because social media provides both positive and negative consequences to youth’s relationships. Due to the rapid advancement of the internet and social media, the world’s youth’s real-life relationship with their peers has been affected both positively and negatively.