Insecurity and Low Self-Esteem in Social Media

We can currently access any social media site and view the amazing lives of everyone living close to us. We follow a dozen celebrities, and we are constantly exposed to their flawlessly lit photos. When in fact, neither the bodies nor the faces are even close to being flawless. Only a combined mess of filters, editing, Photoshop, etc. can be seen in the photos.

Social media and the internet are truly a marvel of human invention. It offers an infinite number of services, and its algorithms never let you get bored. All kinds of freedoms are at our fingertips, and the world is in our hands. But is access to the internet truly free? Yes, it keeps growing our knowledge, but when it comes to ourselves, it hurts our brains.

A Huffington Post poll found that 60% of social media users acknowledged that it had a negative effect on their sense of self-worth. They also discovered that 51% of people claim social media has increased their self-consciousness about their appearance.

Social media has already declared the perfect nose, perfect eyes, perfect lips, perfect body shape, and perfect everything else. Not only are these beauty standards frequently promoted by prominent influencers, but we also frequently succumb to them.

These unrealistic beauty ideals make us feel inferior. And to top it all off, we see a picture of a person who appears to be perfect and wonder, "If they can, why can't I?" Extremely low self-esteem, numerous insecurities, and even body dysmorphia, anxiety, or depression are the results of all of this.

When the constant comparison and desire to appear more attractive overwhelm us, we don a mask similar to those we admire. We no longer share photos with ourselves, only with other people. To get people to like the picture and possibly leave a "looking great" comment, we apply filters and edit it ten times. It burns down and is reduced to a virtual validation game.

The biggest error our generation keeps making is caring more about 
appearing happy on social media than actually being happy in real life.        

Teenagers who participated in a program at Western Psychiatric Hospital in Pennsylvania to provide feedback on the effects of social media reported that 67 percent of them felt worse about their lives as a result of social media. Additionally, 73 percent felt under pressure to post content that improved their reputation, 60 percent felt under pressure to tailor content for popularity and likes, and 80 percent said that social media drama had an impact on them.

The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare
 our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel
-Steve Furtick.        

We must stop emulating altered idols and false beauty standards. We must keep in mind that nothing we see on social media is useful. What we see on our screens is very different from reality.

Happy families and happy faces are just a facade. a delusion that seizes us by the neck and forces us to think we're unworthy. When all that is required of us is to wipe our eyes in order to see reality.