Social media is like medicine. Social media has so many good things to come out of it but at the same time can have very bad side effects for some people. With the younger generation it can be so fun and cool to have all different social apps, but with those they don’t know what is to come.

Body shaming is a huge part in social media, not only is body shaming something a lot of teens deal with, but also body comparing. Body comparing happens on a day to day basis with teen girls. To help find more insight on body shaming we asked two young teenagers and two adults with young teens; all of them were girls. A question we asked the teen girls is, “Have you ever experienced body shaming?” One of the teenagers responded with, “When I was younger and heavier I had people tell me that I should get into sports. When I got older and took off a lot of the weight I have a lot of people tell me I should eat more or that I’m too skinny”. Both of the teens had similar answers; this only shows what our society has come to. Growing up is already hard enough, having young teens trying to find themselves. It is almost like instead of finding their own self on their own millions of teens are becoming more influenced by social media today.

To get more insight we asked the moms, “Do you feel social media has affected your child’s way of life (body image)?” One of the parents quickly responded with no hesitation, “Yes! Both of my children are addicted to their phones as well as all of their friends. We have had to have many conversations about self worth, confidence with body image, and understanding how they can’t live through others.” Although social media is becoming better at influencing body positivity, it is still a struggle on a daily basis for young teenagers. 

To go along with the body image, we asked the teen girls, “Do you think social media is affecting teenagers nowadays and has it affected you in any way?” The other teen responded with, “Yes it’s affected me personally for thinking my life isn’t as good as what everyone puts on social media and that I feel I need to keep up with it.” Teenagers, especially at such a young age, should never have to feel that they aren’t doing something right. They should not feel pressured to change their lives or selves; it should happen naturally if they want change. We asked a similar question to the parents. One of the parents gave advice for struggling teens. “The thing with social media is if you feed into it it will bother you. I know it is hard, but you have to try and ignore things; nowadays that is extremely hard for these children to do”. 

This is an eye opener for not only teenagers, but parents as well. As a society we should be spreading more body positivity. Although most posts aren’t out there to make the younger audience feel as they are not enough, they sure are the ones with more likes, meaning they will pop up more frequently. We all need to stand together and show more of the reality side of things.