Social Media or Social Comparison?
A guest post by Darby Rynd, Pepperdine University.
SOCIAL MEDIA TELLS TEENS, “YOU NEED TO BE MORE ___.”
You need to be more thin. You need to be more likeable. To be more, well you fill in the blank. This begs the question: Social Media or Social Comparison? The ability to share our lives online has an unseen side-effect that has become more obvious as teens judge themselves relative to others. Social media’s presence in the lives of teens has morphed into a game of “Bigger and Better” at the cost of their mental health including body image issues, eating disorders, and the fear of missing out (FOMO). Luckily not everyone has ignored the staggering growth of body image issues and eating disorders. Be More, a nonprofit organization based in Southern California has taken strides to confront a negative social media landscape and empower teen girls by teaching media literacy, holding events, and providing various resources.
There is no question that body image is a hot topic. The National Eating Disorders Association defines body image as “how you see yourself when you look in the mirror or when you picture yourself in your mind.” People have been comparing themselves to celebrities in magazines, movie stars, and models for decades. But the negative effects grew exponentially with the invention of social media; a way for teens to have 24/7 access to retouched images. With teens’ 24/7 access to social media also comes the ability to edit, photoshop, and filter. As social media shapes teens’ lives more and more these images have obtained the power to create a fake reality.
The harm comes in when teens compare their own lives to a digitally edited one. The impact is larger than expected, as 69% of teenage girls say that social media impacts their ideal body image (Polaris Teen Center). The pressure to look “perfect” takes the most serious form in that 2.7% of teens will suffer from eating disorders (Eating Disorder Hope). While social media is not the sole root cause of these issues, it is hard to deny that it is fueling the fire.
A study done by Mariska Kleemans, Serena Daalmans, Ilana Carbaat and Doeschka Anschütz in 2018 sampled 144 teen girls. They were exposed to either 10 retouched or 10 unedited images and then completed a survey about their own body image. The most surprising result is that both groups of images were said to “provide a representative view of reality”. The teens did not even recognize the editing done to the photos. They also found that the more exposure to “idealized” images leads to more focus on physical appearance and how they present themselves online. Another study completed by Emily Weinstien at Harvard University evaluated teen girls after exposing them to Instagram “highlight reels”, finding that regardless of the motivation for scrolling through social media, that more time spent online led to worse post-browsing effects than peers who spent less time scrolling.
The true question is, if these problems are so widespread across teen girls why as a society are we handing them these tools without an instruction manual? In handing over the most powerful tool to date, we forgot to mention to teen girls that their worth is not determined by how others perceive them, or how they perceive themselves in comparison to others. How did we let a tool that was supposed to bring people closer than ever before turn into a comparison contest to see who could be the skinniest, get the most likes, or have the most followers? Teen girls are now being raised in a world where summer is synonymous with positing perfect bikini pictures on Instagram, rather than time spent with friends. Where vacations become opportunities for “content” rather than for family memories. And where they are spending the majority of their time, rather interacting with peers in person. Body image is not the only thing causing comparison online, the inherent nature of sharing all aspects of teen’s life bleeds into comparing their social lives.
The fear of missing out has long been used sarcastically in cases of missing a great concert or seeing a good movie. But FOMO has been amplified on a wide scale. While teens are more connected than ever, they also face the consequences of knowing what their friends are doing with, or without them. The fear of missing out has turned into the fear of not being there, the fear of not getting invited, or the fear of feeling lonely. At this point, teens feel more isolated looking at what people are doing on social media than if they didn’t even have social media to connect at all. The game of “Bigger and Better” takes a new form as teens try to showcase their lives in a way to prove themselves as “worthy” and as someone who you should be comparing yourself to.
This brings me to the social comparison theory (or maybe more accurately described as the social media comparison effect), which is the idea that people are constantly comparing themselves to others, whether it be looks, prestige, or stuff, you can pretty much name it. Social media is the poster child of a way to connect and of a way to compare.
Megan Sherer, (Founder and Executive Director of Be More) was asked, “What are the most negative effects of social media on teens?” It didn’t take her long to say, “Right off the bat I would have said the comparison mindset with 24/7 access to edited, photoshopped, and filtered images, but something else that has come up a lot are the social challenges that social media has”. Be More is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to provide the tools to allow teens to escape the physical and social comparisons online. What started as a passion project has morphed into much more for Megan, who noted that her view of teen girls’ relationships with social media and themselves had these detrimental effects.
Be More was born from the idea that we are so much more than our bodies, more than what the world thinks of us, and more than what social media is telling us to become. “Teens are 2.5 times more likely to develop image issues and eating disorders with heavy social media usage”, is noted on their website.
Offering an array of in person and online resources, events, and wellness classes Be More not only works to empower girls, but to foster a healthy relationship with social media while at the same time working to change the overall environment that teens are interacting with. Their response is three pronged; teaching body positivity, media literacy, and highlighting the advantages of social media. Driving home the main point of life positivity rather than body positivity is at the hallmark of what they do. By taking “body positivity that extra step to life positivity” (Megan), teens obtain a new perspective around social media usage in which not only are all bodies beautiful, but all lives are beautiful. This mindset opens the doors to media literacy in which the organization focuses on mindful usage in order to not only encourage media downtime, but also to interact with accounts online that make you feel positive. In Megan’s words “if it is not making you happy, unfollow”. This is bold in a time that teens feel pressured to follow and conform to the media’s beauty standards when in reality they just need to be more of themselves. Their programs also educate girls on how to recognize photoshopped or edited images. It is the instruction manual to social media that they did not know they needed. The passion to change social media for the better is highlighted in the Be More Awards, an event devoted to honoring those using their platforms for the good and leading the way to “make social media a better place to be” (Megan). As nominations are currently occurring, accounts from Dove to Beyond Yoga are being featured for their boldness of being more authentic in a world that continues to feel dictated by a cycle of scrolling and comparing.
Social media has the potential to become a social comparison, but only if we give it the power to. What if the sentence “You should be more _____.” could end with “who you are”.
