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What do you think you look like?
Do you crave for the opinions of others that you can’t function without someone commenting ‘beautiful’ on your latest picture?
Do you feel the need to photoshop your pictures or videos in order to please your followers or to get the most likes on Instagram or Twitter?
Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter and Facebook are just a few examples of social media sites which a large percentage of people use within our society today. The majority use such social sites in order to connect with friends and family as well as see what is currently trending. Research conducted by the Royal Society for Public Health asked those aged between 14-24 in the UK, how social media platforms impacted their health and wellbeing. The results highlighted that Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all led to an increase in feelings of depression, anxiety, poor body image and loneliness.
Body image and low self-esteem is a global issue within many countries, which is on a rise. 9 out of 10 girls in the UK struggle with low self-esteem and researchers have found out that social media is one of the key reasons why girls are suffering from low self esteem. Popular celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner and Blac Chyna are seen to be Instagram influencers. They portray themselves within the media as having the ‘ideal’ physique and features. The majority of girls follow such influencers on social media and strive to emulate them for the wrong reasons. Girls especially will start starving themselves of food in order to fit into a particular dress size just because personalities like Kim Kardashian wear these sizes and get the most ‘likes’ online. Social Media has helped to create a world in which many people seek for confidence in themselves by aspiring to have 1000+ likes on their Instagram posts or 500+ retweets from their tweets.
Source: Google Images
Cosmetic surgery is another means by which many teenagers and young people are turning to - in order to attain what they perceive as the desired body - as the number of cosmetic surgery procedures being done has increased in recent years. For some it’s wanting a bigger bum or larger breasts, maybe a flatter stomach, or the ‘perfect’ nose. Social media is presenting these images to be what girls in our society need to look like, which is another factor which affects girls self-esteem. Girls with a higher fat to muscle ratio struggle with confidence in their body images as social media, as well as society lists them as ‘fat’. Girls who are labeled fat end up having eating disorders such as anorexia as they are trying to ‘fit’ into what society and the media think is the average body size.
Teenage girls are not the only gender which suffer with low self-esteem due to social media and its influencers. Boys usually aged 16-24 also suffer from low self-esteem and a lack of confidence in their body image. Boys often follow ‘gym fanatics’ because society has highlighted that this is what boys within society should look like. TV shows such as Love Island, Big Brother and Jersey Shore also present the masculine body type which also causes boys to feel pressured into going to the gym, drinking protein shakes and taking supplements in order to be seen within society as ‘attractive’.
In our community, it is important for us to come together and pray for youth within the UK and globally that they would be confident in who they are and what they look like, that no Instagram influencer or television show will cause them to change the way they look like in order to fit what social media suggests to be ‘right’. Psalm 139 v14-15 tells us that ‘we are fearfully and wonderfully made’.
Together as a community, let us take the time to pray that God will raise influencers who are God fearing, and will have a positive impact on their lives and their walk with Christ. We should also remember to pray that God will give all teenagers and young adults the strength to say NO to what society implies to be right and YES to what God says is right.
1 https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/
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