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Social media's effects on self esteem and image
Social media impact on self esteem paper
Social media impact on self esteem paper
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Our life is filled with endless possibilities and choices. Some of our choices that we make are based on what we want or what we need. These choices can have an affect on our lives and make an impact on our future. Wants and/or needs could be very simple or they could be very broad. Our wants or needs include protecting our family, having a rich lifestyle, and a desire to be perfect. To protect our family, we must make choices that could impact us negatively. In the story, “Civil Peace,” the main character, Jonathan Iwegbu, just survived a civil war with his family. He is left with no money and no job, just himself, his family, his bicycle, and his house. Jonathan chooses to find new ways to make money, such as starting a taxi service with his bike and opening a bar. His choice of seeking out new ways to make money is driven by his need and want for his family. Jonathan treasures his family and is grateful to God that they …show more content…
In today’s world of technology, a lot of people use social media to connect with people. Some people post things in their everyday life, but these post can seem unrealistic. Posts can be edited to conceal flaws and make life look perfect. Especially with teens, social media feed are often “... showing only the best and most enviable moments while concealing efforts, struggles, and the merely ordinary aspects of day-to-day life” (Jacobson). This has an impact on those who are viewing these posts and they start having negative feelings about themselves. These teens then make their own posts, making sure to mask their imperfections or things like anxiety or depression. Teens feel like they have to seem like they’re perfect so that they can get validation through their peers’ likes. Using social media can fill our desire to be perfect by editing flaws or hiding how they really feel. People choose to posts these posts because they want to be perfect and get approval from
I feel as though more and more teens of this generation are using social media in order to seek approval of attention of others. Since they are expected to use social media in a way to create an online audience, they post pictures of themselves and activities so that they can get a “yes” or “no” response from their audience. If someone posts a picture online and someone who is considered a “friend” makes a positive comment on the photo, then they have received approval of their actions. If someone makes a negative remark on the photo, then they have received disapproval. She uses various examples of how young adults use social media to create a persona of themselves, such as when girls post sexualized pictures of themselves and create avatars of themselves (Orenstein, 448). This means that how they are seen online will affect how they act in real life. When Orenstein says that “the self, becomes a brand”, she means that young adults have to act in a way that is perceived to be socially acceptable by their peers, and the image of how everyone sees you. So many people today use social media, and the biggest one that is being used is Facebook. Profile pictures, albums, and statuses are things that gets posted up for anyone to comment, like, or dislike. Your “friends” on
James Franco says “Attention seems to be the name of the game when it comes to social networking”, I agree with this as all teenagers in today’s society seem to want is attention. This affects them by distancing themselves from who they truly are and what they believe in as they are very focused on trying to give the people only what they like to see. For example, the Snapchat article states, “Teens have this fear that people might be doing something cooler than us, so we feel like we need to make it seem like we are doing something even cooler.” Teenagers go that extra step of doing something that they might not agree with just to feel good about getting other’s attention. This has affected teenagers because they have forgotten of expressing what they believe in or what they
Therefore the ambition and desire is both a want and a need, it brings peace and comfort but also invades our decision making to figure out the fastest way to meet our goal, which in effect can harm family, friends, and one’s self without guilt.
Students post tons of media about themselves or other people at school. According to Document A states that the more students go on social media the more depressed they become. Document A also states that teens also follow their enemies
Chinua Achebe served in the Nigerian Civil War. This short story gives us insight into conditions in the country at that time. After reading this short story, I have learned a little about the war and much about the protagonist. “Civil Peace” is a short story that focuses on humanity and how Jonathan Iwegbu was able to rebuild his life after the war. In the short story, “Civil Peace,” you learn that not everyone was lucky during the post war, Jonathan was a motivated man, and even after the war, civil peace still did not occur.
Today, people are so focused on the invention that is technology that they forget about everything else. They are online constantly, whether they are by themselves or with friends or family. People have become so linked to technology that it is having negative effects. One of these effects is that “the constant comparison allowed by social media exacerbates a tendency toward perfectionism that is surging in modern society” (Gulli 50). This means that people are concentrating on their online image and placing a significantly high importance on it.
From "thintastic" blogs to suicide stories, social media has become not only a source of conversation but a gateway to harmful suggestions that many teenagers see and believe to be allowable, when in fact the situations proposed are dangerous to those who attempt them. Statistics show that 20% of anorexic teenagers will die prematurely, and 80% of teenagers who commit suicide are depressed (South). Social media has glorified and brought to attention eating disorders, depression, and suicide among teens that might otherwise not become a statistic in these critical categories.
Social media is so popular that according to a recent article published by forbes.com, “72% of American adults are currently using social media sites; that figure has gone up 800% in just 8 years”(Olenski). Social networking was originally created to simply reconnect people with old high school pals, but in recent years it has evolved into a completely different operation. When social media first originated it was also intended for adult usage, which has in recent years expanded into the usage of all ages. Social media can create a negative affect on lives because it has been proven to be a dangerous addiction, for it takes away interpersonal relationships that are essential in life, and it has been proven to prevent people from being productive in life.
Civil Peace by Achebe discusses the period after the Civil War in Nigeria, Jonathan is struggling to survive with his family. He uses what little money he has left to get his bicycle. Jonathan and his family arrive back at their house to see all of the others around it in ruble. He thanks God for everything he has provided. The family works hard everyday to stay alive and is always content. One day, the people are rewarded an extra 20 pounds and Jonathan is ecstatic. That night, however, robbers threaten them and steal the reward. Upon discovering the events of the night, their neighbors pity them but they are just as happy now as they were before, going back to their regular day. While Jonathan could have sulked about all his losses, he rejoiced in all he had received. Even when he was robbed he said that he didn’t need that money so he would still be as content as he had always been. Jonathan never took anything for granted and found more success than others who had greed. People should focus on necessities before worrying about things they
These things have become so common that not having them almost makes it seem like there is something missing. Because of features such as these, it is incredibly easy to share every aspect of what we are reading, doing, eating and listening to with everyone in our social networks. While this has meant incredible advances in the way we interact with our world, it has also fundamentally changed the way our social relationships are created and sustained. Social medial led users to have false impression of others and changed our feelings. Because social media users tend to only show the most positive aspects of their lives, social media users have a false sense of reality when it comes to how they seem themselves, how others see them and how they see other people. “It is not difficult to say that social media effect our perception of others” (Goshgarian213).
One of the most concerning effects of social media is depression. When teens create an online identity, they are often displaying an unauthentic self. This “other” self is often what the person wants to be like. Having to jump from the online self to the real self can often lead to depression. In an article in the Huffington Post, Dr. Jim Taylor calls this Facebook depression. The American Academy of Pediatrics states that “Researchers have proposed a new phenomenon called “Facebook depression,” defined as depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression.” (802). Facebook and other social media outlets create an almost high school-like environment outside of school where the teen has to strive for acceptance as well. Dr. Moreno tells the New York Times that ...
Though constantly confused, needs and wants are the driving force behind every decision. It is virtually impossible to make a decision without analyzing the needs and wants of every person affected by that decision. However, countless decisions in today’s society are only directed towards what will benefit the decision-maker. In those cases, the influence of needs and wants is amplified because the decision-maker fears damage to his reputation. As an effect, his want for an unblemished reputation will drive nearly every one of his decisions. Such is the case for most people. Their desire to satisfy their needs and wants, not those of others, drives the decisions they make. Therefore, all of the choices and decisions in life are driven by needs and wants.
A man by the name of Jonathan and his family come out of the forest after a long and hard war. The first thing you hear from this character is that he is grateful to be alive. “He had come out of the war with five inestimable blessings- his head, his wife Maria’s head, and the heads of three out of their four children” (pg.389). He was happy to have even the little things like his old, small house still standing and his bike, “As a bonus he also had his old bicycle” (pg.389). He and his family went through so much so when he found he even had small things others around him did not, he was beyond grateful, “Nothing puzzles God”
Several decades ago, communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan spoke about the development of the Global Village and how the evolution of new technologies would help connect people on opposite sides of the world, creating online communities that would break boundaries and borders. While this change has been recognized, so too has the idea explored by his successors in which while individuals were expected to look at others in the world through a telescope, they have alternatively developed the tendency to look at themselves through a microscope. As the era of worldwide connectivity began, so did the era of ‘me, me, me’. Both the hardware and the software of the new millennium, inclusive of the iPhone’s forward-facing camera, and apps that allow one to fix blemishes and whiten teeth, have adapted to allow this change to an inward focus. While this has certainly caught on, it has also begun to cause a lot of problems. The act of posting about the self began to be seen as a negatively self-centered one when Facebook NewsFeeds were filled with egotistic stories and ‘Selfies,’ photos of the self. Shortly after, the application Instagram was created, where the occurrence of the Selfie was magnified to a greater degree. This intensive focus inward, and the way these pieces of media are shared, have made some individuals reliant on the positive expressions of others for self-confidence and social approval. When self-esteem is intertwined with how many ‘likes’ a photo gets on a mobile application, we start to see a shift in how self-awareness is formed, what people will do for this approval, and how some will react to a lack of attention.
Our society today has become dependent on social media to entertain, excite, and inform each other on the newest and latest hot topics of today’s world. Some people cannot go as long as an hour without checking their social media websites whether it is on the phone, computer, Ipad, or any other electronic devise with internet. The creators of social media have made it easier to recognize and draw the user in with notifying pop-ups every time something new happens in the cyber world. The easier it gets, the more addicting it makes it to check every second. Also, it’s not only the youth and teenagers using these social media cites; it also claims adults as well. One of the main reasons people make social media accounts is because people are nosey about other people’s lives. They get a social media page such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to monitor people and see what they are missing out of in the world. People post pictures to their “page” for everyone to see how good they look or how funny they are. Since everyone has a social media account, others feel obligated to make one, two, or even three accounts. What used to be rare is now typical for a normal person to have at l...