The 21st century is full of influencers. Left and right, no matter where we look, there are people we wish we looked like. Whether it's on the inside or out, there's always something wrong or something that we wish we could change about ourselves. Struggling with my self-image for quite some time has shown me at least 3 things that make social media a bad thing for teenage boys and girls as well as young adults.
1. Editing applications.
It's no lie that photos on the internet have been edited before having been posted. Nowadays, applications can be downloaded onto cellular devices that people can use to crop, trim, or filter photos or videos before they share them with their followers. Popular applications include facetune, VSCO, Photoshop, Airbrush, Snapseed, Afterlight, Camera+ and Pixlr. There are tons more of these types of applications that people purchase and use to enhance their low-quality photos until they're "post-worthy". The secret is out - although, these were never really a secret.
2. Buying followers.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
One thing that has always had a major effect on me, personally, is how intimidating it is to see how many followers other people have on Twitter or Instagram, and even how many friends they have on Facebook. The numbers don't lie… or do they?
There are applications for people to purchase and use to get more likes on their photos and to have more followers on their profiles. Certain companies let people buy their followers which basically means they're buying fake bot accounts in order to get their photos noticed by brands that can promote them. Big name brands can use popular accounts to maximize their engagement with their products, but these brands don't want to use profiles of people who don't have lots of followers. In other words, unless you buy your followers, your content won't be promotion-worthy.
3. Self-worth points decrease.
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
For some people, looking at fake photos or photos that have bought likes are what really tear them down. From a personal standpoint, before discovering that followers and liked could be bought as well as all of the subtle editing applications, I'd always compare myself to the girls that I see on my Instagram account who are skinnier, have longer, prettier hair, clear faces, or are shorter and have less curves. It makes my heart plummet still seeing these girls and comparing myself to them is inevitable because it can be difficult to figure out if these people have edited their imperfections away or not. The bottom line is that people who edit the heck out of their photos make people stop and stare, and compare.
As powerful as social media can be, and as influential as people are able to be, this isn't the right time to be letting ourselves down by comparing what we look like to what others look like. Or even how others act or who they are inside and out. Looking the way that we look is 1 big thing that we can't change, no matter how hard we try. Although there are temporary solutions to permanent problems, we shouldn't think to go down that route. They're not usually the answers that we're looking for. Rather, we can come together as a community and appreciate what we look like and what kind of people that we are, no matter how heavily our influencers will edit their content to display to us.
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