My View

Social media started to rule the world and our life without them started to be unimaginable. But I feel that the majority of younger people do not realize the dangers of negative effects social media may have on one’s mental health. Our brain constantly perceives the image of a perfect person without one flaw on social media. Therefore, our perception of the standards of beauty is influenced by photoshop and other fake styled images online. I think people should be more aware of the dangers social media can cause to a person and avoid them because the platform was created to help people not to harm them. 

This problem came across my mind when I was 15 years old and I struggled with my appearance. By the time I was older I realized that not everything I see online or in any media is true. I feel connected to this problem because I experienced feelings of being not good, pretty or slim enough. When I looked at pictures someone took of me, I was immediately comparing my look to the models I saw in magazines or on social media. When I saw the difference the confidence, I have had in myself dropped down. Ever since that moment I started to see that I am not the only one struggling with the way I look or feel. I slowly noticed on my closest friends and family how they feel the same way I do, but nobody wants to talk about it. 

For instance, I caught my sister looking at the mirror trying to find any deficiencies. After that, she took out her phone and compared her look to one of the supermodels. She felt awful and not beautiful enough because in her mind she had not met the standards of beauty. Social media play with our minds and place artificially styled pictures online. When people feel like they are not able to meet the goals of being beautiful photoshop comes in handy. People change the way they look just because they seek acceptance and reward from society. Some even decide to undergo plastic surgery and spend money just because they want to feel beautiful and good in their skin. Sometimes we are so blinded by the expectations of social reward that we can endanger our health by plastic surgeries and procedures. 

We should take these problems more seriously because it starts with low self-esteem problems, depressions and many more but it can have far more serious consequences like suicide. Social media negatively influence your perception of reality, your life and yourself. Since people show online only the best side of their lives, we feel that our lives are not that good enough. Everyone on social media wants to show that they live the most amazing life someone can imagine but it is all fictional and played. You do not know what the person hides from the virtual world because what is not on social is like it does not exist. People have to start to realize the fact that not everything they see, read or watch online is nothing but the truth. That’s why I chose this topic because I want to help people see the real world clearly and not through social media.

For Further Research

This site talks and compares the negative effects of social media and gives us information about an experiment. The experiment was made to see if people who spent less time on social media have decreased symptoms of depression and low self-esteem rather than people who spend more time online. I recommend visiting this page to see the details and results of the experiment.

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2018/11/16/new-research-shows-just-how-bad-social-media-can-be-for-mental-health/#554c8fe67af4

This page provides an example of a girl Ridhi and her depression plus low self-esteem caused by social media. She talks and explains her experience with a social media platform and she reveals the feeling she felt while browsing the posts online. On this page, you can also read about more issues social media can cause low self-esteem and depression. I recommend taking a look at this page to see if you have a similar experience.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/social-media-addiction-can-lead-to-low-self-esteem-envy-5-ways-to-beat-it/articleshow/66210478.cms

In this article, we get familiarized with more negative effects social media can have on one’s personal life. The article also talks about depression and low self-esteem. Moreover, we get to know more details on other issues caused by social media. I would recommend this page because you can find out about some problems you would not realize that they might be the result of wrong using of social media, or that they can be the outcomes of negative sides.

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/negative-effects-social-media/

What Experts Say 2

Social media may disturb and negatively change your point of view on the world and yourself. Constant exposure to artificially styled and photoshopped pictures in media may have a serious impact on one’s mental health and decrease your self-esteem. Using underweight, flawless and photoshopped models can start self-esteem problems and self-degradation in life. According to a survey of 1,500 participants, more than half of them reported that social media make them feel inadequate and unattractive. People tend to compare their pictures and lives to the ones they see online. At the moment they are not able to realize that the pictures are edited and changed to look perfect. People seek for recognition and appreciation. Comparing our lives to the ones which seem successful or happy and to people who meet the society’s standard of beauty, may make us feel that we are not that successful, not that happy or not that beautiful. The frustrations start to grow and the feeling of not enough takes over people. Therefore, lies in social media have a negative impact on human life.

link to a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=179&v=0EFHbruKEmw&feature=emb_title  

Brown, J. (2018, January 5). Is social media bad for you? The evidence and the unknowns. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180104-is-social-media-bad-for-you-the-evidence-and-the-unknowns.

What Experts Say 1

Social media are good servants, but bad lords. Social media helps us to know what is happening in the lives of other people. We can follow the online lives of anyone we want, either friend, family, people we do not know or celebrities. Following the accounts on social media where the view on life can be embellished and styled plus totally different from reality. These styled pictures or videos may lead to depression and have a negative impact on one’s life. Some of you may ask “How?”. The study involving 3,800 random participants reported that they felt depressing symptoms such as, low mood, worthlessness, hopelessness, shame, and envy. The reason why people feel sad after spending time online on social media checking posts is that we have distort opinions on reality and people’s life. We see only the good things people post and share but the bad ones are not posted, so others life seems perfect comparing to ours. This may evoke the feeling that we are not good enough and we just waste time comparing our lives online instead of doing something productive.

Waldemar. (2018, July 8). Does Social Media Cause Depression? Retrieved from https://psychcentral.com/blog/does-social-media-cause-depression/.

Outside beauty is more than inner beauty

Hi everyone,

in this blog, I would like to talk about mental health problems caused by social media. Since the majority of people in the modern world uses social media of some sort on a daily basis, I feel like it is important to raise awareness of the dangers social media can lead to. Spending too much time online and being exposed to a variety of content may evoke serious mental health issues. I will look deeper into the negative effects of social media such as depression and low self-esteem problems. I think these problems should be taken in a more serious way than they are now. Mental health problems caused by social media should be propagated more so people have the chance to avoid them. Also, society should be more aware of photoshopped pictures in media which distort the perception of reality. In this blog, I will try to show and inform you about not so spoken negative effects of social media on one’s life.

Enjoy your reading of following posts

Current Events 1

As I mention in the previous post, nowadays people focus on outside beauty rather than inside one. It is much easier to see and appreciate outside beauty because you do not have to put an effort to get to know people’s inside beauty. 

Perception of beauty changed over the years, today’s ideal beauty image is influenced by the newest trends and humans are even willing to change their body appearance according to the trends. As technology improved and innovated it gave us access to more complicated plastic procedures and surgeries. Because we have the ability to form and change our bodies according to our perception of ideal beauty there is nothing in our way to achieve it anymore. People are willing to sacrifice almost everything including their health, just to achieve the standards of beauty which are mostly influenced by society. 

There exist many reasons to want to change one’s body image. Many records and stories of extreme cases show where one went overboard with plastic surgeries and got addicted to constantly change their appearance to the mirage of perfection. Some perceive the highest point of perfection as their role models and they want to resemble their look. My attention took the case of Jennifer Pamplona, she spent more than $550,000 on plastic surgeries to look like her role model Kim Kardashian. She underwent 30 plastic surgeries and procedures, furthermore, she lived through unpleasant experiences when her breast implant exploded. Jennifer said: "I wanted to look like her and as the world began to see how much I looked like her, I would have more and more surgeries. Every time I had a new surgery, I would feel happy, beautiful and recognized – that feeling of being famous" (Mailonline, 2018). 

This case shows us that it is easy to get addicted to positive public reactions. The feeling of recognition in this world is important and social media are our constant reminder of the goal of “perfect” image we do not complete. Therefore, we might feel down and depressed because we are not able to fulfill our dreamed goal. All those lies make us feel low about ourselves, it happens in social media all the time. As I mentioned before the photoshop and plastically edited bodies distort our perception of beauty. In the next 2 posts, we will get a closer look at low self-esteem and depression caused by social media.

Mailonline, J. R. F. (2018, December 28). Jennifer Pamplona, model, spent half a million dollars on 30 surgeries to look like Kim Kardashian. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6535081/Jennifer-Pamplona-model-spent-half-million-dollars-30-surgeries-look-like-Kim-Kardashian.html.

Current Events 2

Problem with today’s world is that people are more focused on the outside beauty rather than inside beauty. Our view on beauty changed over time and it underwent lots of changes. We try to innovate and create perfection in almost everything in this modern world, it does not matter if it comes to food, technology, machines or human being. The human race is brainwashed by photoshopped pictures on social media. Celebrities and media sometimes overedit pictures to unrealistic measures. People follow and want to create perfection at all costs, it does not matter how much we have to change someone’s appearance to get a picture to please the human eye. It is an “apron” to cover and adjust shortcomings and truth from society.

All the media want to promote perfection in a target of profit and growth of popularity of the media. There are many cases in which the pictures were unnaturally photoshopped and posted. Sometimes society finds out about those edits and scandal is born. Over the years many photoshop scandals happened. Some celebrities are against photoshopping and they are trying to promote the natural beauty and not fakery.

Out of all scandals I chose one which happened in 2015. It is not the most recent case but this case is significant for me because when I was 15 years old this post helped me perceive reality more clearly. This unpleasantness happened to model-actress Zendaya Coleman. Zendaya is one of the celebrities who stands up against retouches. When the magazine Modeliste edited and printed the modified picture instead of the original one Zendaya was “shocked”(CNN Staff, 2015) when she discovered that her hips and waist were slimmed. Therefore, the magazine wanted to achieve so-called perfection.

Because of all of the fakery we are exposed to, it is becoming harder to recognize retouched pictures from the original if it is done right. This issue may lead to low self-esteem and perceiving yourself as not beautiful enough if you do not meet standards of beauty set by society. People all around the world use photoshop and various editors to make the picture and the person flawless. But after looking at the “perfect” people in pictures online we tent to start to believe that the flawless look is normal and natural for the human race. Thus, frustrations begin which are followed by low self-esteem and after all depression. In the next post, we will dive into plastic surgery and depression.

CNN Staff. (2015, October 22). Zendaya 'shocked' to find herself Photoshopped.  Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/22/living/zendaya-modeliste-photoshop-feat/index.html.