A recent video with the title “Why I REALLY am quitting social media” on YouTube hit two million views in just 24 hours. In the video, Essena O’Neill, an 18 years old model talks about her obsession with achieving a perfect body in the selfies she took on Instagram. She also stated the danger of the social media and appealed to people for taking a step away from the unreality of social media. This action had drawn people’s attention about the bad influences of social media. There is no denying that the development of smartphone and growing popularity of online photo-sharing platforms like Instagram and Snapchat allow posting selfies on internet become ubiquitous. However, this way of self-representation had largely influence people’s …show more content…
Selfie-taking on internet allow us to feel beloved in a sense of approbation, reassurance and existential clam. At the same time, Selfie-taking is often associated with narcissism and vanity. Narcissism is an extreme self-objectification and a grandiose view of oneself. It has an excessive need to be approved by others and have a sense of entitlement and lacking such need can often lead us to loneliness, resentment and lowered self-esteem. More severely, psychiatrist from American Psychiatric Association have confirmed that taking too many selfies is associated with a mental disorder called “selfitis”. It is a disorder as a type of an obsessive compulsive disorder to take one’s own pictures and post them on social media. () There was a recent case of a 19-year-old British teenager tried to commit suicide because he failed to take a perfect image of himself. In another word, he didn’t get approval from his misconception of reality. Recent study also showed that Body dysmorphic disorder has connection with selfies. According to Dr. David Veale, a psychiatrist at the South London suggests that taking too many selfies is a symptom of body dysmorphic disorder. Body dysmorphic is a mental disorder characterized by an obsessive preoccupation that some aspect of one’s own appearance is severely flowed and warrants exceptional measures to hide or fix it.
Many young girls are aware that what they are doing on the internet can be seen by others and it can lead to positive or negative reactions from their peers. Orenstein is concerned about younger girls and women and how social media could take a bad turn on things for them. She wants us to know that social media can damage one’s reputation depending on how it is used. Girls post pictures of themselves on the internet in order to attract positive attention from their peers, as well as others who are considered as strangers. They want to be able to seek the attention from others in order to create an audience. As a result of this, Facebook is then used as a “social norm”, meaning that people can judge and form opinions based off of what is seen in an online profile. Orenstein explains that she isn’t trying to put technology in a bad light, because she uses it to keep in contact with her friends and family. She’s mindful about what she puts on the internet, while young adults are making their identities into a
In the article “What Your Selfies Say About You” by Peggy Drexler, she talks about self-portraits also known as the “selfie”, and how it has taken over social media and added a manifestation to society’s obsession with looks. Taking a self-portrait can be positive in the sense that you are proud of your image and are not scared to share it with others helping boost up your self-esteem. Although this may help others by persuading them to not be ashamed to share their true image, Drexler believes this can also affect other individuals whose focus is only on looks making them feel self-conscious about their looks. A recent study out of the UK found that the selfie phenomenon may be damaging to real world relationships, concluding that both excessive
Social media has become one of the most popular sources of communication for the upcoming generation. For young people growing up in today’s society, social media outlets such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have provided pictures and news that have become the first thing that their eyes see in the morning and the last thing that they see before bed. These pictures have provided unrealistic standards as to what is considered beautiful in today’s society. As young people refer to these images as a form of comparison, it has created harmful circumstances. These influences on the lives of young people have forced them to take extreme measures and in some cases, has been the cause of death. Social media in today’s society has proven to have a negative impact on the way young people, specifically females, view their bodies. Unrealistic beauty standards, dangerous comparisons and disorders have all been a result to the increase in social media and the impact that it has on the lives of young people.
Murphy argues that people who take numerous amounts of selfies have the same attributes as psychopaths and narcissists however, that does not always mean that they are. They are just unaware if they do something that may go outside of social standards, especially if it's for a picture. Murphy reveals that selfie takers are insecure and are looking for validation from their peers; however their insecurities are masked over by their confidence. The higher number of likes they get, the more confident they feel. Murphy further states that more people are getting cosmetic surgery due to being discouraged when looking at their selfies but with all the applications that can be used to alter one’s features it isn't hard to feel that way. The apps can make your skin clear and teeth whiter it's hard to look in the mirror when you’ve seen a better version of yourself and it seems attainable. Selfie takers wouldn’t be insecure if they learn that
Moreover, Wortham understands the selfie as ‘a kind of visual diary, a way to mark our short existence,’ a dairy of our pictures of our precious moments and memories in our day-to-day lives that we are sharing and putting them up for everyone to see. It is naturally a major role in society today. Selfies have become something of a main factor in the world of social media, which means it’s safe to say that society is getting to a point where the real world and the virtual world overlap almost
The growth of social media has improved our communication skills as a country, but where people are concerned, the substantial growth has had quite the toll on the self esteem of many. I do not think the goal of social media was to have negative effects on people’s body image and the way they see their self, but that is what has seemed to happen. With all of the famous people getting surgeries to make themselves look “perfect” is just showing people that how they were born and how they look naturally is not good enough. The negative effects seem to outweigh the very little amount of positive affects social media has on people’s body
Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), formerly known as dysmorphophobia, is characterized by a preoccupation of one or more perceived defects and or flaws in one’s physical appearance. These defects and or flaws are either not observable to others or appear slightly to other’s. This disorder is also characterized by repetitive behaviors and mental acts as a response to their beliefs on their personal appearance. These behaviors can include but are not limited to mirror checking, excessive grooming, skin picking, and comparing ones appearance to others. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013), those with this disorder have concerns on their physical appearance ranging from “looking unattractive, not right, to looking hideous or like a monster”. The most common concerns those with this disorder have are obsessions about their skin, hair, or nose; however it is not limited to these specifications of the body. Any part of the body can be of concern to an individual such as eyes, teeth, breasts, legs, lips, etc. These preoccupations are time consuming, intrusive, unwanted, and are generally difficult for the individual to control or even resist.
In today's society, social media is directly affecting how the modern teenager perceives their body image. The struggle with not being able to prevent this issue is most teens are all about social media and all of its wonders. Teens spend most of their time on social media. Social media alternates these images body images and it becomes unhealthy for teens. These unhealthy stereotypes harass young adults in their daily lives. Teens struggle with the stereotypes causing them to do unhealthy things to their bodies. Social media's views on body image is causing people to form eating disorders and body image anxieties or concerns. Social media and body images affect teens´ self confidence which can lead teen to look at themselves differently and
The problem that I would like to discuss about, is how social media has a huge impact on what society believes people should look like and how people should be reaching the standards of attractiveness. Many people have social media accounts, like Instagram, Pinntrest, Facebook, Youtube, Snapchat,etc. which is fine to have, but some people that have these accounts might be more acceptable to developing body dissatisfaction that could lead people to develop eating disorders, low-self esteem, or even result in death, because they feel that they don’t reach society’s expectations of attractiveness.
The concept of body image is one of the greatest underlying themes in personal satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Body image as described by Nio, is “a person’s unique perception of his/her body. It’s how we perceive ourselves, how we think, we appear to others, how we feel about our look from ‘our own internal view’” (3). Humans are constantly making themselves aware of the image their body portrays. The problem has become that instead of being comfortable with the body they are given, there seems to always be a yearning for what others have. A number of these problems can be attributed to the ever-growing media industry, and in this century, even more so focusing on social media that has a purpose of strengthening external validity. The United
Selfie-Loathing: Here’s Why Instagram Is Even More Depressing than Facebook. Slate Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/07/instagram_and_self_esteem_why_the_photo_sharing_network_is_even_more_depressing.html
Nigerians and Socialism: A Marxist Reading of Adichie’s Americanah In Adichie’s Americanah, we get a good look at how society and cultural changes can affect people’s lives. Our two main characters, Ifemelu and Obinze, are both raised in Nigeria but then later leave to immigrant to Anglo-Saxon nations. With this immersion into new cultures comes changes for our main characters, and with these changes comes a lot to analyze.
There is no secret that a modern day teenager’s life is built around the usage of technology. As a result of society’s heavy reliance on technology, social media has become popular amongst people who are “technologically advanced.” Though there is a wide variety of social sites that can be accessed through modern day technology, a few have become very popular. Social sites which have become widely popular among teens include Instagram, Tumblr, and Snapchat. These social networking sites provide instant social connection and emotional support while letting teens post and send pictures of their everyday life. Many teens look towards social media for emotional support and social acceptance. The continual usage of these sites are negatively impacting the self- esteem of teenagers worldwide since they heavily rely on social medias to portray images of what they believe is acceptable for the society we live in.
Today’s Society and Selfie Culture On January 31, 2014, Reverend Galen Guengerich wrote an article called ‘Selfie’ Culture Promotes a Degraded World View. This article talks about how if people take ridiculous amounts of selfies, it makes them appear narcissistic. The ‘selfie’ is a rather new word, which really took off and skyrocketed in 2013 when an Australian man fell and hit his lip, then posted a picture of himself online.
Nowadays, social media is very accessible to people from different ages because of the high technology and it has a huge impact on people’s lives. There are several effects on people in United Arab Emirates but social media spreading positively and negatively to influence them. In addition, there are huge changes in lifestyle and people’s culture, especially the youth. So women in the UAE have become beauty conscious and they want to ambition for better fit the standards of celebrities and models. The highest users of social media in the world are Emirati ladies. Emirati ladies have represented themselves in social media by different ways. On Instagram, ladies prefer taking photos and videos for their normal lifestyle habits and sharing it with the public. Also, everything they represent is lavish, expensive or trendy. They are blinded by these trends in the way that they change their normal bodies, outfits, and they’re use of cosmetic surgeries. In addition, plastic surgeries are playing a major role in the UAE, especially by women. The most common types of it are Botox and fillers. There are also cosmetic surgeries. The study also founded that most teenagers used YouTube for educational purposes, while teenagers and adults prefer using Instagram and twitter than using YouTube. Moreover, social media impacts