Social Media Can Drain Teens’ Self-Esteem
Just like fire, the steam engine, and vaccines, the internet is one of those massive, humanity changing events that happened only a few decades ago. In today’s world, kids grow up with the internet right at their fingertips, always accessible and always expanding. How a child interacts with this massive source of information while they’re growing has serious ramifications that we can’t even begin to understand simply because that generation is still so young. What we can observe however is that adolescents who use the internet, more specifically social media are more likely to have lower self-esteem. By consuming vast amounts of social media, teenagers are constantly subjected to “upward comparison” which over time degrades their mental health.
For context, the phrase upward comparison is simply the practice of comparing someone of a higher social class to your own. Not necessarily just status and wealth but looks, likeability, health, and general positive traits. Upward comparison is fairly common when browsing social media due to teenagers being able to directly connect with and see the day to day lives of celebrities and influencers. An impressional teenager will see a glamorous post from a powerful person and compare themselves to them. They might even do the same with their peers when a friend or acquaintance posts about something happening in their life. This social comparison is detrimental because it creates unfair standards that teenagers scrutinize themselves over. (https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fppm0000047)
These unfair standards that teenagers are subjected to are also a product of the general culture around social media. There seem to be growing trends amongst both celebrities and normal people that showing off is equivalent to power and likability.
Big social media influencers compete with one another to see who can show off the biggest mansion, the flashiest cars, and the best bodies. (https://www.psychalive.org/is-social-media-to-blame-for-the-rise-in-narcissism/) The more spectacular a person’s life is on social media the more attention and money they receive which causes the competition to want to go bigger and brighter. This swirling feedback loop is often what teenagers get caught in. A cycle of narcissism and money chasing only increases the problems teenagers feel with self-esteem and self-evaluation. The ideas and lessons of the culture they participate are all about excess and perfectionism. This culture, combined with the fragile mental state of a growing adolescent is why teens in today’s world have lower self-esteem and a higher rate of mental problems like anxiety and depression.
While a lot of the problems found in teenagers today can be attributed to social media, there is a lot of good social media can do in the right circumstances. Upward comparison isn’t inherently a negative thing and sometimes and an individual can feel inspired by looking up to someone in a higher social class. (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1996-01401-005) This idea is also compacted when a celebrity uses their platform to do good. Some people in power actively push positivity and uplifting messages in an attempt to spread inspiration amongst their fans. These celebrities are not the most common but when they use social media effectively they can do a lot of good for younger minds that look up to them.(https://eagleeye.news/feature/celebrities-use-platforms-to-become-social-and-political-activists/) These types of people are sadly the exception rather than the rule and social medias biggest stars are at the top because of their self-indulgent and grandiose nature.
Through research and observational studies, there appears to be a link between social media and low self-esteem in teenagers. This low self-esteem is a result of harsh self-reflection after time spent upward comparing. The internet is relatively new in human history so we have had barely any time to study the long-term effects that a person might have grown up in an age like ours. The people who lived through the creation of the steam engine could never have imagined the technology we have now, so we truly have no idea where the internet will lead the world. While social media has the potential to damage young minds now, we have no way of knowing what the future holds for those young people going forward.
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