Mental Health
114 Social Media And How it Negatively Affects Mental Health
Allison Hollingsworth; Jenna Mennona; Caitlin Woodham; sebraun; and jrandra
INTRODUCTION
Social media is a widespread network that allows people to upload and publicly share information to people all over the world. It has become a vital source of communication for society. Social media sites and platforms allow for people to share, like, and comment on posts. These sites proved to be initially extremely beneficial, but the task of sharing your personal life with millions of people on the internet does come with some downsides. Social media can have detrimental effects on mental health. Self-image is proven to be the main victim, therefore, causing mental illnesses such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.
Beauty Standards
The definition of a “beauty standard” is the combination of mainstream trends that determine whether or not an individual is deemed “beautiful” or not. They are not developed by a single person, but by an entire society based on what is considered to be trending, or popular. Beauty standards have been around for generations. They have become so normalized that many do not even question their value or morality. Due to the development of social media, the negative effects of unrealistic beauty standards have heightened. Instead of focusing on magazines and televisions, industries could push these standards more easily to the public through social media. Industries, specifically the beauty and fashion industry, push this ideology onto the public for the sole purpose of making money. They prey on the vulnerability of the public and encourage them to change their appearance and fit the beauty standards, all by buying their product.
A majority of those negatively affected by beauty standards are women, young girls, teenagers, mothers, and so many more. Social media popularizes influencers who fit beauty standards, and many of their followers on apps such as Instagram are young girls. These young girls look up to these celebrities and influencers. Yet, what many fail to realize is how fake and misleading social media is as whole. A survey on female college students found that women compare themselves more negatively when viewing feed from celebrities and peer groups (Oakes, 2019). Everything on social media is filtered, edited, and staged to look perfect. It has been shown that beauty filters are narrowing beauty standards and making them more attainable for influencers to promote. From October 2019 to August 2020, Instagram banned face filters that dramatically altered the facial structure of one’s facial features because of the negative mental effects it was shown to cause (Ryan-Mosley). It is fake, but society continues to believe its authenticity. This can be extremely damaging to one’s mental health, specifically in adolescents who are easily influenced. It can ruin one’s confidence, self-esteem, and value of self-worth. If social media is constan