Freshman Maddox Lee doom-scrolls on Instagram Reels. Photo courtesy of junior Aidan Field.
A 2023 poll of teenagers showed that 59 percent have an Instagram profile, while 93 percent use Youtube regularly. A poll of 44 San Luis Obispo High School students showed very similar results, with 57 percent active on Instagram. Like all teens, SLOHS Students are highly active on social media.
As the use of social media sites amongst teenagers and pre-teens increases, so does the popularity of many influencers, showcasing their idyllic lifestyles, seemingly perfect appearances, and flawlessly executed morning routines. However entertaining these videos may be to watch, is the false glamour of these people’s lives affecting the self-images of teens?
“I was fed videos about dieting and it caused me to develop an eating disorder that I’m still struggling with to the point where my mom got a doctor involved…It’s stupid how social media pushes content on you and there are little options to get it off your feed short of stopping it all together,” said an anonymous Expressions poll respondee.
Experiences like this are becoming more and more common as social media evolves. Advances in artificial intelligence and social media filters have given influencers yet another tool to alter their appearance, and combined with the effects even simple lighting changes and makeup can have on how someone’s body looks, beauty standards are becoming even more unrealistic.
Being shown these “perfect” people who aren’t entirely truthful about the tactics they use to look that way causes teens to set goals for themselves that aren’t truly attainable, and then become disappointed in themselves when the results aren’t what they were expecting.
“Social media is Oz before looking behind the curtain. We can only see what people share on social media. The rosy picture of perfection is of course totally detached from reality,” said psychology teacher Chad Timm.
Many teenagers don’t consider that influencers profit off of presenting a certain image to the world, and therefore work very hard perfecting it. Due to this, influencers often showcase a certain aesthetic, crafted with specific objects and clothes to near perfection, which can be just as harmful as falsely representing how they look.
“Social media has definitely made me want to curate a certain aesthetic, but it is often very unrealistic to have your room look these certain ways or have these types of outfits,” said another poll respondee.
The pressure caused by the expectations social media and influencers create can be extremely harmful. It’s important for teens to find strategies that work for them, in order to break away from this detrimental environment.
“Get off the phone, get more sleep, spend time with your friends, make more friends, join a sport, club, or any social organization, set health/fitness goals based on performance not appearance, and be aware that social media is detrimental to your mental health,” said Timm.
Given that influencer culture is unlikely to alter itself anytime soon, it’s up to teens to make healthy choices about the content they are consuming, and to remind themselves that their worth is not determined by their ability to reach unrealistic standards put in place by social media.
Sources: pewresearch.org, forbes.com, apa.org
