Quotation:

“In one study of teens in the U.S. and U.K., Facebook found that more than 40% of Instagram users who reported feeling ‘unattractive’ said the feeling began on the app. About a quarter of the teens who reported feeling ‘not good feeling’ said the feeling started on Instagram.”

Comment:

After talking to a few of the girls in my friend group, I found the experience in this quote is more common than I had previously thought. They had all said they had shared a similar experience to this one. It is very upsetting to see this experience is such a common thing, as well as how little it seems that it is addressed or even talked about in society. I however have not shared this experience. While their feeds may be filled with all of these standards and diets to do, my feed has been mostly filled with sports and memes. Due to the different content that I see, I may have been oblivious of some of these things that are going on, I have yet to see the true negative effects that social media can have on women simply because of my own personal experience. It is important to me that this topic becomes less stigmatized and easier to talk about in the future. Young women and men should not be subjected to seeing images and videos of people showing off the “perfect” body because of unrealistic expectations and body images. I think this starts by making people comfortable with their own bodies and not afraid to be themselves. A lot of the blame goes towards the social media companies like Instagram, who promote filters that change your appearance to a stereotypical image of a good-looking face and/or body. I hope that this issue on social media will be addressed in the future as it continues to affect the growth and development of young people, especially girls, everywhere.

Question:

How can we address the toxic issues on social media that affect young people?