Through pinning, friending, and tweeting, social media sharing has become one of the easiest forms of communicating, especially for young people.
However, the convenience comes with a price.
The digital universe bombards teenage girls with opinions and rules on how they should look, who they should like, and how to behave.
Family and relationship expert Dr. Jill Weber focuses on issues related towomen and our culture in her book Having Sex, Wanting Intimacy – WhyWomen Settle for One-Sided Relationships.
Image Driven
“Social media is very prevalent as we know. It’s almost impossible to avoid it, it’s impossible to be a teen girl or boy and feel normal without participating in some kind of social media. When it becomes problematic, especially for teen girls, is when it’s sort of used as an outlet to form an identity and understand one’s self,” Weber said.
Social media adds pressure for girls to seek an almost “artificial perfection,” which can lead to psychological and emotional problems.
The staggering success of Instagram shows the power of images. According to Instagram, people share some 20 billion photos a day worldwide, scoring 1.6 billion likes.
As uploads stream daily, many teens base their self-esteem on their number of “likes” or “followers.”
But how fulfilling does that leave social media users who use the sharing platform?
“If a girl or a woman is struggling with a sense of herself feeling good enough, feeling worthwhile, maybe she is turning to social media more than the norm. At times she feels good she, gets a lot of likes, a lot of attention, maybe it gives her a temporary sense of validation, but that validation is temporary,” Weber said.
“It’s often fickle because the next day you could post a photo and not get any positive feedback, then her self-esteem plummets,” she added.
That need for positive feedback forces many teens to go for the “sexier” look they see splashed across magazine covers, television screens, and websites.
A common trend of photos promoted on sites like Instagram seem to have a theme: girls who are looking very sexy or slim.
Source: CBN News
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