The Negative Effects Of Social Media And Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is a global evaluative dimension of the self and determines if you are satisfied with certain aspects of your life. For example, your appearance, your personality, your abilities and your relationship with others. The media is a powerful source of tool to manipulate adolescents that portrays unrealistic images that affect the way they feel about themselves. I believe that the social media does affect the self-esteem of adolescent’s due to self-image.

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.

Social media influences a teenager's self-esteem because it can lower or boost their self-esteem. It can lower a teenager's self-esteem by having cyberbullies on the internet putting them down with their negative opinions of the teen which can also drive the teens to feel hurt, or discourgaed by letting others opinions get to them. Social media can boost a teenager’s self-esteem by having a lots of friends or followers, because they’ll feel cool and popular. It can also boost their self-esteem because if they post a selfie of themselves on social media and everybody is commenting on how pretty or how nice they look, they will feel

In her article “Social Media’s Impact on Self-Esteem” Clarissa Silva analyzes the effects of social media. She is able to show how disconnected people have gotten because of being online. Which is causing many to suffer from the paradox effect and vanity validation, that has also contributed to negative impacts in many relationships. Different sets of data are used as evidence, the percentage of peoples fear of missing out (FOMO) being a prime example. Social norms have shifted from face to face conversations to online discussions. Silva demonstrates how it plays a big role in self-esteem because of the decrease of social skills. She sheds light on the issue to decrease the irresponsible use of social media without knowing

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.

Curated images, calculated presentation, epidemic feelings of inadequacy and rampant self-esteem issues all characterize today’s social media culture. Extensive research now supports the detrimental effect that social media has on relationships, mental health, and overall well-being. Kelly Austin, a contributor with Teen Shield, cites the benefits of social media – claiming increased interconnectivity and confidence building. While I agree with some of the points she proposes, I support that social media in fact has a net negative effect on its users. I aim to first shed light on her article and the issues that she fails to address, then transition to how we can all move forward with social media in a beneficial way.

Communication barriers are not the only issue that has been brought on by social media. Extensive social media use has also been known to affect a person’s self-esteem. Some individuals suffer from a low self-esteem and limit themselves to social media in hopes to create a different image of them. According to Charles Cooley, “The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind" (Morine, 2009). For some teens and young adults, social media may help them open up and achieve a higher self-esteem. On the other hand, social media on other teens and young adults may have a completely opposite effect. In an article titled, Is Facebook Making Your Child Depressed, it is stated that social media websites such as Facebook “can create a skewed reality that makes teens feel alienated” (PR, 2012). When a person, that is not completely happy with their life, goes onto social media and reads all about other people enjoying a multitude of activities and enjoying their lives this could

Social media has become a part of our life, and no one can imagine living without it. Social media has grown a lot over the several years. Young individuals have always thought that social media is a marvelous piece of technology, but they never think about the negative effects of ‘like’ culture, which contributes to conformity and other negative consequences. The article, The Insidious Evils of ‘Like’ Culture, written by Neil Strauss, tells us about to what people can go to get more “likes.”

In order to understand the effect that social media has on self-esteem, we need to understand the construct of self-esteem. According to Coopersmith’s definition, self-esteem is “the evaluation which the individual makes and customarily maintains with regard to himself: it expresses an attitude of approval and indicates the extent to which an individual believes himself to be capable, significant, successful and worthy. In short, self-esteem is a personal judgment of the worthiness that is expressed in the attitudes the individual holds towards himself.” (p. 4–5) To put it more simply, self-esteem is the attitude that people have toward their own values.

Social media has become one of the most popular sources of communication for the upcoming generation. For young people growing up in today’s society, social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have provided pictures and news that have become the first thing that their eyes see in the morning and the last thing that they see before bed. These pictures have provided unrealistic standards as to what is considered beautiful in today’s society. As young people refer to these images as a form of comparison, it has created harmful circumstances. These influences on the lives of young people have forced them to take extreme measures and in some cases, has been the cause of death. Social media in today’s society has proven to

Not just women are changing their physical appearances to try and resemble celebrities; men are too. Jordan James Parke claims to have spent over $150,000 trying to achieve Kim Kardashian's look as well. Parke has obtained Botox injections, laser hair removal, eyebrow tattoos and lip-plumping surgeries to try and mimic the Kardashians appearance. Parke has faced criticism and backlash for the cosmetic changes, but he is pleased with the way that he looks and wants to continue to attain more plastic surgery in the future.

Social media is a phenomenon that has become largely popular among the 21st century youth. While many believe that social media causes a sense of narcissism in children, that is actually false and instead comes from parenting and over excessive coddling. In a study conducted in 2005, psychologists, Mary Alvord and Judy Gardos found that over excessive coddling done by parents in hopes of raising their self esteem actually causes their children to feel insecure and insignificant. Due to that feeling children put up a front of extreme selfishness in hopes of gaining admiration and acknowledgement. Also in this time in age, older generations confuse finding self-worth and love with narcissism. On social media, many people work to show off themselves and to been seen as pretty, but in all honesty the photos people post aren’t for satisfaction of

According to a recent study by IDC Research, 80% of smartphone users check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up each morning.

Currently, there is a significant amount of individuals with low self-esteem in the world. Each day this number increases because of the discouragement of being unique. Doctor Joe Rubino recently stated that “85% of the world’s population is affected by low self-esteem.” In recent times, the media, Adobe Photoshop, and professional modeling have become prevalent in lives. These sources of negativity are the significant causes of this growing problem of low self-esteem.

Instagram impacts user’s self-image and self-esteem. Young girls and boys are being shot down by users not liking their image, commenting, or even sharing one’s post. Americans check Instagram multiple times a day, because they are looking to see how many likes, or comments they get. If these users’ do not get a certain amount of likes that exceeds their expectations they think, “I’m I pretty enough?”, “is the picture taken well?”, or “does anyone like me?”. This breaks down young Americans emotional health and well-being. Americans today that use Instagram are commenting publicly about how their self-esteem was jeopardized because of this form of social media. For example, Michelle Linker states “I feel anxiety over how many likes I get after I post a picture. If I get two likes, I feel like, what’s wrong with me? Some people judge Instagram by deleting photos that don’t get enough likes” (Gajanan). This quote is an example of how Instagram effects user’s emotionally. Some users even check their “like” count multiple times a day once uploaded for