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Social Comparison Essay

Decent Essays

Social comparison is a theory proposed by Leon Festinger that states that people tend to compare themselves to others, typically to peers, family, or others that are of higher stature. Many studies argue for and/or against upward and downward social comparisons as they believe the comparisons tend to be negative. This issue is increasingly evident in adolescence, since teenagers’ vulnerability enables them to connect to peers rather than their parents, therefore they tend to attract to social media-a new basis for social comparison among youth. Although evaluating others may be an efficient and easy way for teenagers to gain quick popularity within their peers by seeking out social norms, teenagers are vulnerable to this attraction to social …show more content…

Recent articles describe the effects of social media on one’s life, specifically, social comparison. However, research on social media’s effects on adolescence is valid due to adolescents entering a major developmental stage for identity development, and they undergo rapid body changes at the same time commonly known as puberty (Nesi & Prinstein, 2015). Since teenagers are still children, their vulnerability to the social world increases as they compare to peers and learn many new norms and social scripts. Indeed, since they are transitioning from a child to adulthood, this can be increasingly difficult, as they must become accustomed to these norms and social scripts as they try to develop a social identity and undergo school stress. Young teenagers’ hasty decisions to develop their personal and social identity as well as adjusting to rapid body changes mentally and physically provide a negative influence on adolescence by affecting their life satisfaction, nutrition, and social life. Social comparison in social media has been an ongoing issue due to the many experts debating its negative effects finding that there is a positive influence: increased and easy social connectedness and that social comparison is a solution to end the obesity epidemic (Shakya et al, 2015). Despite its negative and positive effects, does social media, and social comparison has a stronger negative correlation than social comparison in an offline

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