Boobs or Brains: Is Social Media Building us Up or Breaking us Down?
Fat.
It’s the forbidden ‘F’ word.
It’s the one word that can’t be glamorized or accessorized to look remotely attractive.
It’s the one word we’ve been taught to avoid, hate and prevent at all costs. And when we are only shown photos of skinny, thin, perfectly-shaped and perfectly-proportioned girls on social media, how could we believe anything different?
As apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook embed themselves deeper and deeper into the foundations of our existence, the line between our real-world identity and our virtual identity begins to blur. These image-focused micro blogs are presenting images that impress this ideal illustration of physical perfection that are in reality, just manipulated and edited images that don’t reflect real people or real life. Subconsciously, we allow ourselves to fall prisoner to the dangers that pervade the all-too-vague concepts of body image outlined by social media sites.
These pictures, which are often not even real, subconsciously send users into realms of comparison, making them feel inadequate and insufficient. In turn, we submit ourselves to a world full of forbidden, and often harmful, fruits. When we allow ourselves to be too impressionable and too vulnerable while scrolling through our Instagram Discover pages or fishing through our Facebook feeds, we risk falling prey to the self-criticism, comparison, jealousy and self-doubt that swarm these sites. Instead of living by the empowering quotes our Internet friends use as captions online or even better, by the lessons mom and dad taught us when we were young about loving ourselves, we are permitting ourselves to pity ourselves rather than empower ourselves so we can later empower others.
A study conducted by the University of Buffalo assessing the relationship between social networking behavior and self-worth among female college students found a link between time they spent posting, commenting and comparing on Facebook and their self-esteem and self-worth. And no…not for the better.
Often, these falsified images of ‘the perfect body’ and its unfeasible standards force people into waves of self-criticism, ultimately leading to more pervasive and harmful streams of lowered self-esteem and reckless behaviors like an eating disorders or drug use.
One study conducted by Florida State University found a group of women who were instructed to scroll through Facebook for 20 minutes had greater feelings of body dissatisfaction than another group that spend 20 minutes researching rainforest cats. So while social media may not be the direct cause of lower self-esteem, it certainly acts as a catalyst for disordered thoughts and potentially worse, disordered behaviors.
Though image-focused blogs are not the sole causes of eating disorders, there’s no denying the negative impact that a well-constructed and intensely-edited picture can have on viewers. In a meta-analysis studying the effect that the presentation of thin media images has on body satisfaction by several Kenyon College psychologists, results demonstrated that body satisfaction is “significantly lower after viewing thin media images than after viewing control images.” Their study not only concluded that “mass media creates and promotes a standard of beauty that leads many adolescent and adult females to experience significant body dissatisfaction,” but it also deduced that social media “contributes to the development and maintenance of eating disorders.” So while few images on social media are inscribed with messages like, “Stop eating” or “You’re ugly if you don’t look like this,” their underlying takeaways are not too far off.
In a world that is constantly telling us to love ourselves but simultaneously popularizing pictures of women with bodies “like-a-Coke-bottle,” as the wise Trey Songz once put it, or men chiseled to the bone with six pack abs and Hulk-like biceps, it’s almost impossible to remain confident and true to ourselves…our real selves.
And the effects of this insidious disease don’t discriminate. Whether you’re male or female, young or old, white or black or any size, shape and color of the rainbow, photos projecting ‘the perfect body’ are everywhere and as long as you have access to the digital world, you’re susceptible to this contagion.
In fact, in a new study published in JAMA Pediatrics’ January issue, researchers found that close to 20 percent of adolescent boys are highly concerned with their weight and physique, many of which were more likely to be depressed and engage in high-risk behaviors like binge drinking and drug use. The cause? Expert on male eating disorders Dr. Raymond Lemberg attributes to the media, saying that, like unrealistic portrayals of women’s bodies in the media, “Men’s bodies are not good enough anymore either.” Just as women’s bodies in the media continually reflect standards set by Barbie dolls and Playboy models, men struggle to see beyond the G.I. Joe action figure and Men’s Health model standards set for them. So while1 this problem is frequently perceived as female-focused, the effects of falsified images in the media do not discriminate.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/53915760@N04/8152961530
While we wish there was, there’s no pill we can take or prayer we can make to rid ourselves of the imposing and rather unwelcome portraits of perfection that are painted across all our online social feeds. Though I must admit, a capsule filled with a healthy dose of self-love, that’s side effects include self-hate and chronic comparison suppression, wouldn’t be the worst idea.
Yes, there are Facebook groups like ‘BEyouTIFUL’ and countless Instagram accounts promoting confidence and self-acceptance or devoted to #Fitspiration and ‘wellness.’ But…these pages are seamlessly woven between the images and pictures we are also attempting to escape, making this journey towards ‘loving yourself’ all the more daunting (and difficult).
When we see an image of a stick thin girl online, we don’t see her struggle with anorexia, the anxiety that’s eating away at her (physically and metaphorically) or the amount of hours she spent editing herself to perfection.
When we see a photo of a hunky guy who’s all definitions of tall, dark and handsome with 8-pack abs and a sharp jaw-line, we neglect to acknowledge the potential role that Photoshop, extreme (and unhealthy) diet and exercise and/or steroids may have played in the making, or better, creation of his photo.
We’re so caught up comparing ourselves to people whose virtual identities possess qualities we want (or think we want) that we’ve forgotten to perform a heavy-duty Clorox wipe-down of our own mirrors so we can focus and appreciate the beautiful and not-so-beautiful qualities we forget we’re oh so lucky to have.
Ultimately, we all want what we don’t have. But it’s time we stop seeing the fabricated and manipulated images online as portraits of perfection and quit looking at ourselves with eyes seeking ‘the perfect body.’ Instead, we must work on manifesting our own definitions of perfection, detached from society’s impractical and unattainable standards. We must use social media sites as positive resources to cultivate relationships, curate authentic brands for ourselves and create realistic standards to hold ourselves to, founded on self-empowerment, self-confidence and self-love. Until then, our world will continue to persist as a people plagued with poor sense-of-self and self-esteem, engaging in dangerous behaviors like eating disorders and drug use.
It’s time we set our own standards and stop allowing social media to do it for us.
Works Cited
www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/body-image-pressure-increasingly-affects-boys/283897/.
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/1766495
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/eat.22254/abstract
http://time.com/4459153/social-media-body-image/
https://www.buffalo.edu/content/dam/cas/communication/files/Stefanone/Stefanone_cyberpsych.2011.pdf
