How does social media effect some of us?
Social media seems too be everywhere now, some people may even call it the love child of the world wide web. Infact 2.95 billion people are expected too have it by 2020.
It first started off with MySpace which most people now, would have not even have heard of, then there was Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and so much more. It seems as if we can’t even go to our kitchens without everyone talking about the latest filter on Snapchat or, the newest update on Instagram. Young to old, boy to girl almost everyone uses media.
Although, it can be a great thing to connect with friends and family from all around the world, is it really that good that it’s all around us, all the time? Many teens and even adults have a tough time with it now, Trying to live up to some expectations, even though there is no need to change. I think most people have felt as if we were meant to look a certain way. You could argue that it’s not social media that does this and it’s just the way life is and one way or another we will feel like that but it was never as much of an issue as it is now. With the average person using social media over 2 hours a day which is a month a year, how could we miss the constant flow of ‘perfect’ selfies? It’s somewhat easier to avoid models in magazines then it is with the Kardashian’s.
Is it really good that so many people are feeling as if they need to live up to a certain image, have a six pack or flawless skin? We now seek acceptance through a picture that will not mean anything to us in a few years. Some people might say that it is just simple insecurities or teenagers going though a phase which, it partly is but it doesn’t help that air brushed skin and ‘perfect’ bodies are put everywhere and it doesn’t help that ‘perfect’ girls are holding packets of fit tea in pictures trying to convince us that, that’s the way to loose weight and be healthy, which it obviously isn’t. It is good to be healthy and to eat right but it’s not so good that a lot of us feel as if we are expected to look like Victoria secret models or Zach Efron.
It can’t be good that boys, girls, women and men are believing that these photoshoppped, airbrushed and just overall edited pictures are actually real. By this point the virtual world is morphing into the real one.
The internet is an amazing thing and we probably wouldn’t be able to function without it now but shouldn’t something have to change if the addiction is forcing so many people to have low self-esteem and to shut themselves out from the real world to fall into an imaginary one? This could lead to metal health issues and nobody wants that.
