Effects of Teenage Girls on Social Media

As the rise of social media and the internet inclines, it is causing issues surrounding teenage girls. Social Media… defined as websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking. These platforms create a place where people can promote ideas they created, see what friends were up to, and get to follow their favorite celebrities. Nowadays social media could be defined as a completely different thing. Social media has a huge negative impact on teenage girls' lives especially with their self-confidence, the disconnect with reality, and the dangers of social media itself.

Insecurity problems exist with many teenage girls who have a smartphone. Phones have become an addiction. Notifications from social media are constant, giving people a reason to check their phones very frequently. Teenage girls are the biggest culprits of always being on their phones. On social media, girls can edit their pictures to make them look different than what’s real. This creates a double-standard that girls have to look a certain way or else they are said to be “ugly” or “unattractive”. There is an unrealistic stereotype that all girls need to be skinny, wear makeup all the time, and have their hair done. This makes all girls who aren’t 100 pounds (which is unrealistic for being a teenager) feel ugly just because of a stereotype social media plants in our minds. If it wasn’t for social media, teenage girls wouldn’t see all of these people who edit their pictures to make them look like the stereotypical girl these days. This issue doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but this issue is making girls fat-shame themselves. Fat-shaming itself is another huge issue with teenage girls, but social media is one of the causes of it. Instagram is the biggest app that increases the idea of fat-shaming. On the app Instagram, there are ads every few pictures while scrolling down the feed that is trying to get people to lose weight. According to “oprahmag.com”, “Within a 24-hour period, I’d come across eight to 10 sponsored posts—for food delivery programs or diet-monitoring apps—with a similar message: become less fat. These suckers deceptively blend into your feed so that during a mindless scroll, you're staring at a disturbing silhouette of an overweight woman  “walking her way to skinny.” This is just one of the many ways social media affects the way teenage girls think of themselves.

Also on social media apps, all girls care about is how many likes and comments their pictures got. It is a huge competition all of the time. Girls will post a selfie not just for the benefit of enjoying pictures of themselves, but for a different meaning. Most of the time when a girl posts a selfie they want all of their friends to tell them that they are beautiful and gorgeous. If a girl does not receive this kind of attention their self-confidence goes down immediately. This should not be happening due to a single photo posted on a social media app like Instagram.

Another default of social media is it distracts everyone from reality, especially girls. On social media, people post pictures of their houses and dream vacations. This obviously would make anyone jealous that they do not have the chance to have that in their life. Most of the time the people posting these pictures are famous celebrities and they are unrealistic goals for most people. Boys would be a little jealous, but girls are an entirely different story. When people go out to dinner they are all on their phones and not enjoying the world around them. Girls will talk behind each other's backs all of the time, but will never say it in person. This is the effect of social media on everyone, but most teenage girls. According to “QUARTZ.com”, the average teen spends 9 hours or more on their phone which is almost half of the day. That is a ridiculous amount of hours to be on a smartphone.

The danger of all of this- girls have become anti-social as human beings. Also due to social media catfishing is a thing. Catfishing is when an online predator pretends to be someone they are not and tries to date a younger person. Most of the time it is a girl being catfished by an older man. This is actually a serious issue most people don’t pay attention to. Tracking is also another danger of social media. All of the social media apps require you to have your location on. This is a possible source of getting kidnapped by men, most of the time.

The first appearance of social media began in 1979. It obviously wasn’t as big as it is now, but the beginning of Facebook and Twitter took place in 2006 and that is where social media began to blow up.

This became a problem when smartphones came out. The rise of social media apps began the rise of girls' self-esteem going down. On the app Facebook people began to start posting everything they would do and girls would obviously get jealous if they weren’t invited to go do something. That is just the start of how these social media apps made girls' self-esteem decrease. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, and every other social media app is the reason why girls have most of their insecurities that they do. Back before these social media apps came out girls still had some insecurities due to magazine models, but in this day and age, it is extreme.

In summary, the rise of social media and the internet inclining has caused serious issues surrounding teenage girls. Due to social media, girls' self-confidence has gone down dramatically, girls are disconnected from the reality of the real world, and girls have been put in danger due to tracking through social media apps. Social media has had its negatives throughout its existence, but these negatives have had some serious issues that have hurt everyone especially teenage girls.

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