Throughout middle school and high school, nearly every girl I know, including myself, has idolized models. With the creation of social media, this idolization has turned into obsession and a form of envy. To top off the self-esteem issues that adolescents are already dealing with, social media is a place where it is difficult not to feel bad about yourself. Besides actual pictures, numbers of likes, followers, or subscribers are a detrimental threat to someone’s confidence. So many girls can scroll through pictures of other girls (most of which have been retouched), and wonder why they don’t look the same way. In addition, cyber-bullying, backlash, and trolling all go hand-in-hand with the destructive thoughts young girls cope with. All these factors found on social media equal a solution found in so many teenagers; body image and self-esteem issues.
For my project, I plan to delve into statistics on how many hours girls spend on social media per day, and how high their self confidence levels are. I expect the correlation to be that the longer amounts of time they spend, the lower their confidence is. I will do this by posting a google form on schoology, and analyzing my results. This project will correlate perfectly with Susan Bordo’s theories on body image, and the results should reflect accordingly.
As for a solution, there is only so much I can do on my own. However, I believe that messages on body image and self esteem should be relayed to every girl by the most influential people in their lives (parents, teachers, older siblings).
A girl feeling completely comfortable in her own skin is a rare occurrence in our day and age, and I hope to change that.
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