Digital Media & Self Image

Mika Clopten

COMM 2500

May 1, 2017

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 In todays society, teens turn to the internet for body validation because they

dont feel good enough without their peers opinions. The natural urge to seek online

approval can create a dependency on the internet. Social media has a huge effect of self-

image; we are seeing the world through filters and we arent sure what is real and what

is photoshopped.

Before social media existed the only things, that affected peoples identity were;

parents, peers, school, and their community. At that time media sent a healthy message

about who we were and how we see ourselves. The internet did have bad influences, but

the positive outweighed the negative, now the negative outweighs the positive. Digital

media makes it difficult to form an identity. There are more versions of self than ever

before, which gives kids who may already be struggling to figure out who they are even

more to juggle. (Johnson 2014)

Using social media revolves around appearance. People spend a lot of time

checking how they compare to others and talking about appearance. We are constantly

exposed to things on the internet. We see people on social media that society deems as

perfect. Girls will see other girls who photoshop their pictures and think that they

arent pretty or perfect because they dont look like the girls on the internet.

According to the Common-Sense Medias body-image study, teens who are active online

worry a lot about how theyre perceived. (Knorr 2014) People become trapped in the

world of social media, they sit and wait to see how many like and/or comments they can

get on a single picture.

Social media messes with your confidence whether youre aware of it or not. We

all think scrolling through Facebook or chatting with your friends is harmless but social

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media can be damaging to your self-esteem. (Roberts 2015) I mentioned this before, but

people are so obsessed with the number of likes their photo gets on Instagram, and if

they dont get a number that they are happy with they will delete the photo and they

wont post for a while. They let the number of likes determine how confident they are.

55 percent of girls and 34 percent of boys say that social media makes them feel

more self-conscious about their appearance. (Dahl 2014)

58 percent of girls say seeing pictures of other person living glamourous looking

lives makes them feel bad about themselves, only 19 percent of boys feel the same way.

(Dahl 2014)

30 percent of teens say social medias means that always need to be camera ready.

(Dahl 2014)

However, some people may say that social media isnt to blame for peoples self-

image problems because you have the power to turn off the television, magazine, or put

your phone down. Although social media is very influential you dont have to follow the

rules, you choose what to believe about yourself. Instead of buying into body image

messages, you can comment nice things about that person and you can make them feel

better about themselves. Dont let the media consumer you, you should realize that

celebrities are not the only source of role models, there are other people, like

trailblazers, that would be good role models. (Berninger 2014)

Our lives are dictated on the number of likes our photo gets on Instagram. Society

puts labels on artificial people and real people feel less worthy because they arent as

artificial as the Instagram models. Society should care about this problem because it

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causes a lot of young people to think about or even ask their parents about plastic

surgery. This problem is a simple fix, we stop setting standards for women (and men)

and stop labeling artificial people as perfect.

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 Bibliography

Berninger, Lauren. "Stop Blaming the Media for Our Body Image Issues." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 22 Jan. 2014. Web. 01 May 2017.
Dahl, Melissa. "Selfie-esteem: Teens say selfies give a confidence boost." TODAY.com.
TODAY, 26 Feb. 2014. Web. 01 May 2017.
Johnson, Chandra. "Growing up digital: How the Internet affects teen identity."
DeseretNews.com. Deseret News, 28 May 2014. Web. 01 May 2017.

Knorr, Caroline. "Is Social Media Giving Your Teen a Negative Body Image?" Common
Sense Media. N.p., 28 Apr. 2014. Web. 01 May 2017.

Roberts, Emily, MA, LPC. "How Social Media Messes with Your
Confidence." HealthyPlace. N.p., 24 July 2015. Web. 01 May 2017.

Taylor, Jim. "Technology: Is Technology Stealing Our (Self) Identities?" Psychology

Today. Sussex Publishers, 27 July 2011. Web. 01 May 2017.