How social media posts from kin and friends are hurting your self-esteem
Anything that comes with advantages carries in different proportions its disadvantages too. Social media is one but the perfect example.
What you need to know:
- Experts explain that “images posted by known people are deemed to be much more attainable hence raise levels of expectations and pressure on the individual engaging with the online content.”
- When it comes to engaging with “images shared by strangers such as celebrities and supermodels, people are inclined to be overly skeptical labelling them as unrealistic.”
Chances are you are either on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, WhatsApp, Tiktok, or on all the aforementioned social media platforms.
In this era of widespread digitisation and globalisation, we cannot rule out social media in our lives considering that in 2021, people spent around a third of all the time they were awake, a staggering 3.8 trillion hours, on their mobile phones, according to the latest research dubbed ‘State of Mobile’.
But a section of experts have faulted social media for causing family and household disintegrations “as people tend to prefer virtual relations with strangers to physical interactions with family and friends”.
However, you could be causing yourself “more harm” by engaging with loved ones on social media platforms than when interacting with strangers, scientists warn.
According to the latest research, when it comes to self-esteem issues and creating unrealistic body goals, family and friends are actually more to blame than people unknown to us such as celebrities and social media influencers.
People tend to be more troubled by a desirable body image posted by a family member or a friend than if it was posted by a popular person as it is usually perceived to be unachievable, illustrates the research published in Body Image Journal.
The experts explain that “images posted by known people are deemed to be much more attainable hence raise levels of expectations and pressure on the individual engaging with the online content.”
When it comes to engaging with “images shared by strangers such as celebrities and supermodels, people are inclined to be overly skeptical labelling them as unrealistic.”
“Social media platforms that are image focused provide users with limitless opportunities to internalise ideals of appearance and make negative comparisons that consequently lead to more outcomes of negative body image,” explains the lead researcher, Prof Viren Swami.
“Our research established that appearance satisfaction decreases with online engagement irrespective of the person posting the content.”
“It was surprising that a significant negative impact on levels of appearance satisfaction was indicated when subjects viewed online content posted by family and friends as opposed to content from popular celebrities and social media influencers.”
To arrive at their findings, the researchers observed 50 individuals aged 23 years on average who provided daily feedback over a period of two weeks.
Real time
The participants were instructed to wear a special gadget on their wrists, which enabled them to record the effect of social media activity on real time.
During the study duration, the devices allowed the subjects to report how satisfied they were with their own appearance every time they interacted with online content.
They were each required to report time spent “actively” on social media for instance sending messages on WhatsApp, posting Tweets, and writing Facebook posts.
“Passive” time online such as viewing photos on Snapchat, and reading posts on Facebook was also recorded.
Further, the subjects were asked to press once on the wearable device button while viewing content from family, friends and peers and twice for people they did not know in person such as celebrities and influencers.
However, the participants were not required to disclose the social media applications they were using.
The findings indicate that time used “actively” on social media was 73 minutes daily while 90 minutes daily was time used “passively” on average.
Significant drop in levels of appearance satisfaction were linked to social media engagement irrespective of the platform used.
Interestingly, when subjects interacted with online content posted by people familiar to them, the effect was more than twice as “damaging” compared to online content from strangers such as influencers and celebrities.
The latest findings are an addition to the increasing evidence that “negative results of body image” are strongly linked to the use of social media.
“Health practitioners might find it important to factor in the level of an individual’s online engagement when trying to boost their appearances owing to these latest findings,” they offer.
