More Than Just Pretty by Jessie Faerber

Author:Jessie Faerber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: SPCK

Is Instagram good?

When I asked teenage girls about the influence Instagram has on them, 52 per cent believed that Instagram has a positive effect on their self-esteem.

ARE YOU SHOCKED? I was shocked (!!!). I had totally assumed that Instagram was bad, bad, bad for our self-esteem, so why are people saying it’s positive?! However, I understood this more when I read some of the heartbreaking reasons girls thought that Instagram was good for their self-esteem. I reckon that as a society we are baffled about the implications of Instagram for our self-esteem. Here are some of the things the girls said about Instagram:

‘All I want is to look like them, be like them, do what they do, but I know I will never get to’

Forty-three per cent of the girls referred to Instagram making them compare themselves with others. This is scaaaaaaaary because of its inaccurate representation of someone’s life. Instagram promotes pixilated perfection. Our thoughts about the lives of others are distorted, which means that our thoughts about the value of our own lives are distorted. We compare our true reality with other people’s edited reality.

‘If I don’t get likes I know the picture is ugly so I just delete it’

Ahhhhhhhhhh, this makes me so sad!!! Plus, some others said their happiness depends on the amount of likes they get. Despite some understanding about the fake element to social media, teenage girls are still stressing to gain likes, comments and followers – meaning they delete the posts that don’t live up to expectation. We CANNOT use Instagram to find a version of ourselves that receives the most positive social engagement. We will be so unhappy.

‘People put comments saying that you are not worth living and it takes a toll on your self-confidence’

This is absolutely heartbreaking. Instagram allows us to be pretty anonymous: we don’t necessarily know who everyone is on our feed and we can comment what we like, when we like. We can write stuff online whether it’s valid or not valid, whether it’s true or false. The views of other people affect the way we view ourselves when they should NOT.

‘Because you can post good selfies and feel great and get lots of likes and it makes me feel like everyone likes me’

Although we can use the social network to build and encourage one another, there is a fine line between receiving this out of love and obsessing over receiving it in order to justify our existence. Our thoughts about our image cannot rest on the opinion of Instagrammers.

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