Toxic Social Media Culture

 The Effect of Social Media on Women

In recent years, social media has been growing vastly. It started as a simple way for people to share recent life updates, but in the past ten to fifteen years it has grown into a large platform for people to not only share their lives but also compete with one another. I have grown up in the generation where we have always had social media, but older generations grew up without it. For the sake of this blog post, I interviewed my mom, who grew up without a cell phone for all her life and I wanted to see how it impacted her childhood versus mine. I want to explore deeper how social media and influencers are affecting girls in this generation.

For more context, the reason I have chosen to write about social media is because it has become an unsafe place for the youth to grow up with. Many young girls fall under the pressure of having to be perfect all of the time and presenting their best selves on Instagram and Tik Tok or other social media platforms. This is a very important current issue that many girls are facing. I have seen a lot of circulation online about young girls watching videos and looking at pictures, and how it has been really damaging to their mental health. They feel like they aren't good enough, and that they have to look exactly like these women who are so unrealistic. They often wonder why they dont look like this also and so it sends them into a spiral of feeling unworthy. 

When I spoke to my mother, I asked a few questions relating to mental health and body image issues. I asked her about how she felt growing up without having to look at celebrities or not having influencers to set idealistic standards. She told me that it is something that she never even had to think about and didn't even know existed until she had two daughters who have grown up with social media. She told me that she feels lucky to have grown up in a generation without conflict or competition. It is true that even in our parents' generation there were body standards and pressures to “look good” but it was not as widespread as it is now. Now, it is so much more accessible, and this puts a lot more pressure on developing girls. Another thing that I thought was really impactful that my mother mentioned is that she feels like because there were no phones or social media when she was growing up, she did not feel like she was always in competition with her peers and did not have this constant need to keep up. Something that I have noticed through Tik Tok and Instagram is that there are always revolving trends that are changing so quickly. Even I succumb to the pressure of wanting to have the newest trend in my closet, and this can get pricey and make people feel less than. My mother said that she has also noticed this in my generation and feels grateful that this was not a predominant issue in her generation. 

Something that I mentioned earlier, but that I think is probably the number one issue in my generation is influencer culture. Nowadays influencers are the number one form of advertising, and also are known as the most popular “it” girls on the internet. Most people strive to be like these influencers with large sums of money. What young and impressionable girls don't realize is that the reason these influencers look so good and are the ideal body standard is because they have these large sums of money. They can pay for expensive workout classes, body and face alteration procedures, and so much new technology to make them look the best they can. This is often not disclosed to their audiences, and girls can get frustrated when they don't see results regarding things like weight loss or skincare issues. One of the biggest examples that I can think of regarding this that recently happened this past week is with an influencer named Remi Bader. Remi was arguably one of the most influential plus size influencers, constantly putting out relatable content regarding inclusive plus size brands and more. She was very relatable to the plus size community, and always had such a positive impact on young girls struggling with weight. People liked her so much because she was so honest and upfront about her struggles with weight, but still always seemed happy and confident. In recent months, people noticed that she was rapidly losing weight and that she is now a size XS. This drastic change happened so fast, and Remi always told her audience that she just started working out and eating healthy. She also said she got her mental health problems under control and this allowed her to be motivated to workout and eat healthy. Hundreds of girls were inspired by her, they thought if Remi can do this, so can I. For months Remi Bader marketed her weight loss as the result of hard work. People were getting frustrated because they weren't seeing the same results as Remi even though they were doing the same thing as her. Last week, it came out that Remi Bader underwent weight loss surgery, and that was the reason she lost weight. This sparked a lot of controversy on the internet because her followers were disappointed that she was not honest about her weight loss. People were angry that she gave people false confidence and that she lied to her followers. As we can see this is a clear example of how influencer culture can be very damaging to young girls and how what you see online is not always real. 

Overall, I think it is very evident how influencers and social media have a massive impact on the recent generations, especially on girls. There have been many instances in which influencers have marketed products or even themselves in a very inaccurate way and this has caused plenty of mental health and body image issues for my generation. After speaking to my mother on the subject, it became even more apparent to me that this is a real issue. After learning about my mothers upbringing and relation to other girls her age, and the lack of competition, I feel saddened by the recent generation. It is not our fault that this generation faces such issues, but it is unfortunate that we have grown up with access to such toxic standards. It is my hope that in the future children can stay away from these ideas for just a little longer and enjoy their childhood.