Social Media and Negative Self-Image

We spend countless hours mindlessly scrolling down Instagram and Facebook, admiring the seemingly perfect lives of celebrities, models, fashion bloggers, and even our peers. But, do we stop and think about the influence it has on our minds and our self-esteem? Do we realize the constant self-doubt we're subjecting ourselves to?

There has been a lot of discourse on the impact of mainstream media and its unrealistic representation of beauty standards. Social media makes it even easier for the internalization of these distorted images. This leads to body dissatisfaction, a key predictor of disordered eating (Smolak and Thompson 2009).

Social media usage, in particular, has increased dramatically over the last decade and continues at an incline. Pew Research Center indicates that 71% of 13- to 17-year-olds use Facebook, 52% use Instagram, and 41% use Snapchat in 2015. Teenage girls are also using image-based social media platforms more frequently than their male counterparts; 61% of girls use Instagram versus 44% of boys.

Many researches assign central importance to media, emphasizing that exposure to these media messages can impart unrealistic images of female beauty. The social media further exacerbates this issue. Social media websites are interactive and cater to the interests of their users, unlike mass media which panders to a heterogeneous group. It allows comparison between peers instead of models; one might not feel threatened by the body type of a celebrity, however, that of a friend could make one feel insecure.

Internalization of the thin ideal for females has its roots in a host of social and cultural forces, including pressures to adhere to socially-defined ideals of physical attractiveness, peer influence, media depictions, same-sex interpersonal modeling, and symbolic, cultural, even ideological, representations of female beauty. Another important social learning factor is self-objectification, the process by which girls and women come to view their bodies as objects to be looked at, much as an observer would (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). This psychological internalization of an observer’s perspective toward one’s body leads to body surveillance.

Social media allows comparison between oneself and peers leading to negative self-worth, and envy, especially when body image is a part of one’s self-concept. People already suffering from depression or low self-esteem because of body image issues have it worse off. They tend to seek content that further makes them feel ashamed of their own body type. The number of pro-mia and pro-ano blogs on social media is alarming, and their presence deliberately makes people, especially young impressionable girls, feel worse about their bodies.

The solution to the problem comes perhaps from the perpetrator itself. Social media can be used to spread the message of body positivity. Messages that help young women understand that they are perfect the way they are, that they don’t need to take diet suppressants, they don’t need photoshop or airbrushing for their bodies. Social media can be harnessed to help people unlearn the ideas that they need perfectly thin, or hourglass-shaped bodies to feel good about themselves.

Actress Jameela Jamil’s iweigh movement is a perfect example of such a campaign. The account supports the notion that people are more than just their bodies. It celebrates women for their accomplishments, accomplishments, achievements, and characteristics that make them who they are, rather than the number they see on a weighing scale. People are encouraged to post unfiltered, non-airbrushed photos on their Instagram account with the #iweigh and the account reposts them.

Such accounts, activists and campaigns can do wonders for this issue. They can influence people to reevaluate the way they think about themselves.