Does social media diminish or improve the self esteem of users? As I write this paper and do my research we see more and more of how this question can be answered, that social media does diminish the self esteem of users. We see over the years how much of an impact social media has on our society. Every year there’s something new that becomes a trend on social media that somehow alters the user’s brain and affects them physically, mentally and emotionally. I stand by the fact that social media affects society negatively and ruins our self esteem. Each article I’ve read and picked out for my paper reveals factors of social media that cause this negative impact. Throughout my paper I discuss how negative social media can be especially when it comes to the self esteem of everyday users, people like you and me.
Did you know that the generation most active on social media are Millennials? Surprisingly not Gen Z, but did you also know that the generation mostly affected by social media are Gen Z? Social media has been around since 1997 but reached its peak in 2004 when Facebook was launched and was accessible on smartphones. Social media is a fun way to interact with friends, meet new people, keep yourself updated with your favorite celebrity, watch funny videos and many more fun positive things. Social media may seem to be something unharmful and nothing to worry about but over the years that seems to be untrue. Overtime people start to overthink about what they see online to a point where it starts to affect daily users mentally, physically and emotionally. It has also gotten to the point where many users have little to no self esteem, and that’s when the questions kicks in. Does social media diminish or improve the self esteem of users? It doesn’t improve self esteem. Social media diminishes users’ self esteem based on what is being shared and posted. It affects all people that are online but mostly young users.
Throughout the years, social media has grown a bigger platform as more and more apps develop and are out to the public. Apps such as Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tiktok, and many more are used daily by thousands of users around the world. With this being said, thousands if not millions of people post and share everything going on in their daily lives, including celebrities. With people using social media all the time, over time it’s seen how users all around the world start to view themselves differently “Social media users are extensively exposed to photographs displaying idealized self-presentations. This poses a potential threat to youth’s appearance self-esteem” (Steinsbekk 2021). Due to what’s being posted, shared and portrayed, users’ self esteem seems to decrease overtime, confidence decreases due to beauty standards, filters, surgerys etc. The use of social media nowadays has actually become a negative thing to users throughout the years especially to teens.
Teenagers seem to be the age group mostly affected by this affect social media has on self esteem. They spend a majority of their time on social media uploading photos in hopes they get compliments, likes, comments and get reposted by all their friends, but that’s not always the case. In some cases these teenagers (not just only them other age groups too) don’t always receive the feedback they want “Whereas youths who mostly view and respond to other’s posts (i.e. other-oriented social media use) are exposed to these idealized presentations, while not receiving positive feedback on their own appearance, which may result in reduced self-esteem” (Steinsbekk 2021). On the internet you’ll always come across a ‘internet troll’ or two, which are people who spend time of their lives on the internet making offensive comments to people in hopes to hurt their feelings. Users like these trolls are another main reason why people’s self esteem decreases, users hope to get positive feedback on a selfie they upload only to get diminished by people online that get fun out of bullying appearances.
But what else is there about social media that causes this negative impact on self esteem for users? Filters and beauty standards, “People of color are frequently subjected to what some researchers call ‘filter bias.’ In one common example, the beauty filters built into sites like Instagram or Snapchat might apply paler skin or more typically White facial features to a user’s selfies” (Weir 2023). Indicating that POC don’t fit the beauty standards and when they go online to take photos, the filter they use automatically changes their features to make them appear as “White”. As a POC, seeing how you have to change your features to be presented as White affects someone’s self esteem, basically saying that your features as a POC aren’t attractive enough to fit the beauty standards of a White person so these filters alter your appearance to be more “beautiful”. A simple filter can alter a person’s whole face even to the point that these filters go beyond that and make it look like this person changed their whole race. Why? To fit the beauty standards. These filters are setting up beauty standards making people of color want to change their own features since what we see online are White features.
These beauty filters affect anyone, but a study shows how this affects adolescents “In an ongoing daily diary study with adolescents, she is finding evidence that people who are exposed to algorithmic and filter bias are at increased risk of next-day depression and anxiety symptoms.” (Weir 2023). Beauty standards that are out in social media and that social media encourages affects these teenagers who are online and take these selfies. The feeling of depression and anxiety are causes of the filter and beauty standards that are put out in social media. Affecting these teens’ self esteem due to them not “fittin beauty standards”, teenagers are still growing and developing their brain, seeing stuff like this on social media has a huge impact on how they view themselves.
Even so, another group of users that are horribly affected by social media are girls and young women “Six in 10 teenage girls say they are ‘completely unhappy’-with poor self-image and a “toxic” social media culture fuelling despair, research suggests” (Donnelly 2019). These adolescents spend the majority of their time on social media, and more especially, looking at these female influencers and celebrities they look up to. But what’s wrong with that? These people they look up to most of the time have a lot of work done and heavily edit their photos to portray themselves to look a certain way to be considered beautiful in our society. This is what causes the decrease of self esteem, women start to look at these celebrities and influencers and think they are the beauty standards and not themselves. This is when the insecurities develop and self confidence decreases. They start comparing themselves to these people they look up to.
There’s nothing wrong with looking up to celebrities and influencers but it gets unhealthy. Adolescents looking up to these people affects them negatively at some point. As previously mentioned, these celebrities and influencers spread beauty standards that are far from being natural and cause people to feel insecure “Researchers said young girls were suffering from ‘toxic social comparisons’ in a culture based on unrealistic beauty images, airbrushing and ‘likes’ on social media” (Donnelly 2019). They spread unrealistic beauty standards and get so much work done claiming it’s all natural is what makes these young girls so insecure. Young girls believe that because these celebrities look a certain way with all the work they have done that they have to look like that inorder to feel beautiful, confident and fit beauty standards of this generation. Young women don’t yet understand how unrealistic these celebrities look and that it’s all fake, all they see is a role model that they wanna be like.
These are just a few of the reasons of how social media affects the self esteem of users, there are so many factors that contribute to how social media works and the way it affects anyone. Racism, celebrities, beauty standards, body dysphoria, filters, people posting and so many more factors. We all may not get affected by one thing but there are certainly others who still do. Teenagers if anything are the most vulnerable to these types of things.
Overall, not everyone may be affected by social media and let it affect their self esteem but it is possible. It’s not something new but something that’s finally getting attention and studied to help those who do get affected by what they see online. With the information we finally have now we are one step closer each day to helping a way to stop or help slow down the decrease of self esteem users tend to develop over the years.
Works Cited
Donnelly, Laura. “Six in 10 teenage girls say they are ‘completely unhappy’ with poor self-image fuelling despair.” Wikipedia, 19 December 2019, https://go.gale.com/ps/retrieve.do?tabID=News&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchResultsType=MultiTab&retrievalId=0c1dc884-364d-4649-96b9-defc6c5617e4&hitCount=4&searchType=BasicSearchForm¤tPosition=1&docId=GALE%7CA609179808&docType=Article&sort=Releva. Accessed 12 May 2024.
Steinsbekk, Silje, et al. “The Impact of Social Media Use on Appearance Self-Esteem from Childhood to Adolescence – A 3-Wave Community Study.” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 114, 2021, pp. 106528-, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2020.106528.
Weir, Kirsten. “Social media brings benefits and risks to teens. Psychology can help identify a path forward.” American Psychological Association, 1 September 2023, https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/09/protecting-teens-on-social-media. Accessed 12 May 2024.
