How Social Media Is a Toxic MirrorRachel Simmons

Aug 19, 2016

We’ve long understood that movies, magazines and television damage teens’ body image by enforcing a “thin ideal.” Less known is the impact of social media on body confidence. With the rapid aging down of smart phone ownership, most parents spend “digital parenting” time on character coaching, making sure their kids think before they post and refrain from cyberbullying. For at least a decade, educators like me have argued that social media’s biggest threat was its likeness to a bathroom wall, letting teens sling insults with the recklessness that comes only with anonymity.

Not anymore. Social media has also become a toxic mirror.

Earlier this year, psychologists found robust cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, dieting, body surveillance, a drive for thinness and self-objectification in adolescents. Note: that doesn’t mean social media cause the problems, but that there’s a strong association between them.

Visual platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat deliver the tools that allow teens to earn approval for their appearance and compare themselves to others. The most vulnerable users, researchers say, are the ones who spend most of their time posting, commenting on and comparing themselves to photos. One study found that female college students who did this on Facebook were more likely to link their self-worth to their looks. Interestingly, while girls report more body image disturbance and disordered eating than boys—studies have shown both can be equally damaged by social media.

And thanks to an array of free applications, selfie-holics now have the power to alter their bodies in pictures in a way that’s practically on par with makeup and other beauty products. If the Internet has been called a great democratizer, perhaps what social media has done is let anyone enter the beauty pageant. Teens can cover up pimples, whiten teeth and even airbrush with the swipe of a finger, curating their own image to become prettier, thinner and hotter.

All this provides an illusion of control: if I spend more time and really work at it, I can improve at being beautiful. “I don’t get to choose how I’m going to leave my apartment today,” one young woman told me. “If I could, my body would look different. But I can choose which picture makes my arms look thinner.”

But invariably, the line between a “like” and feeling ranked becomes blurred. “I think it affects teens subconsciously just seeing how many likes they get and how much attention get just for how they look,” one 16-year-old told me.

What teens share online is dwarfed by what they consume. Pre-Internet, you had to hoof it to the grocery store to find a magazine with celebrity bodies—or at least filch your mother’s copy from the bathroom. Now the pictures are as endless as they are available. Teens can spend hours fixating on the toned arms or glutes of celebrities, who hawk their bodies as much as their talent.

The meteoric rise of the “wellness” industry online has launched an entire industry of fitness celebrities on social media. Millions of followers embrace their regimens for diet and exercise, but increasingly, the drive for “wellness” and “clean eating” has become stealthy cover for more dieting and deprivation. This year, an analysis of 50 so-called “fitspiration” websites revealed messaging that was indistinguishable, at times, from pro-anorexia (pro-ana) or “thinspiration” websites. Both contained strong language inducing guilt about weight or the body, and promoted dieting, restraint and fat and weight stigmatization. Writing in Vice, 24-year-old Ruby Tandoh recounted how a focus on “healthy” and “clean” eating and “lifestyle” enabled her to hide her increasingly disordered eating and deflect concerned peers. “I had found wellness,” she wrote. “I was not well.”

Many teens are media-literate about movies and magazines; they take in digitally altered images with a critical eye. Less clear is how social media literate they are. The older adolescents I work with often shrug off conversations about the perils of social media with a “duh” or “I know that already.” That doesn’t mean they’re not listening, or feeling worried that their bodies don’t measure up. (Besides, this population is hardly famous for gushing gratitude for parental advice.)

So what can parents do? Ask teens their opinion of the ways people modify their own appearance online: Why do people do it? What do they gain, and from whom? Sometimes just naming a feeling as normal can make a young adult feel less alone. It never hurts to tell your teen they matter more than their looks. As they peer into the mirror on the screen, a good old-fashioned “I love you exactly as you are” may be more timely than ever.

 

Study links poor teen mental health to social media useE L I Z A B E T H P A Y N E , O T T A W A CI T I Z E N

Published on: August 8, 2015

Should parents throw away their teens’ cellphones and lock up their laptops?Some might be tempted to after reading the research findings of Ottawa Public Health epidemiologists that were published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behaviour and Social Networking last month.

The study — Frequent Use of Social Networking Sites Is Associated with Poor Psychological Functioning Among Children and Adolescents — was based on a survey of 753 Ottawa students between grades 7-12. It uncovered an association between teens who are heavy users of social media and poor mental health.

The study found that teens who are on social media for more than two hours a day, a full one-quarter of students in the study, report poor self-rated mental health, psychological distress, suicidal ideation or unmet need for mental health support.

The results corroborate some previous findings on the connection between social media and the mental health of teens, wrote the authors, although other studies, of university students, found no such relationship. The discrepancy could reflect a difference in the way depressive symptoms were measured, or the fact older youth may handle challenges differently than their social peers.

The research points to a correlation, but not causation, between poor adolescent mental health and social media, said co-author Hugues Sampasa-Kanyinga. It is unclear, he added, whether social media contributes to poorer perceived mental health among adolescents because issues such as cyberbullying and unrealistic body images affect

them negatively, or whether social media is relied on as a coping strategy by adolescents who feel isolated and alone and suffer from poor mental health.

In other words, social media could be part of the problem or part of the solution — or maybe both.

Although the issue needs more research, Sampasa-Kanyinga said the findings send a message. He and co-author Rosamund Lewis wrote: “Parents need to be more aware of the pitfalls of social networking sites (SNSs) and actively engage with young people in making it a safer and enjoyable experience for them. Parents should consider frequent use of SNSs as a possible indicator of, or risk for, mental health problems among children.”

Various health bodies recommend children and adolescents limit their screen time to two hours a day, something that is increasingly difficult especially with cellphone-carrying teens for whom social media is a fully integrated part of their lives.

So how do parents balance the research concerns with reality?

Greg McGillis and his 17-year-old daughter Brontë began communicating more about what she was doing on social media after they were advised to limit her social media use as part of a support group for teens with anxiety.

“We had long talks about it,” McGillis said. “She reduced her use a little, changed some of the things she was doing and got off some platforms.”

McGillis said he witnessed his daughter experiencing conflict and even lost friendship because of social media, something that exacerbated her anxiety.

“At that point, I was tempted to take all the phones and toss them in the garbage.”

But quitting social media completely, he said, often makes little sense for teenagers.

“The problem is when you are 17 or 16 or 15, part of your coping mechanism is social media and it is very difficult to uncouple those things,” he said.

“No one is saying, ‘Toss the phone in the garbage.’ They are saying limit it.”

Lauren Dobson-Hughes, president of Planned Parenthood Ottawa, which runs courses at high schools on navigating social media, says it is unrealistic and often unwise to advise teens and their parents to quit social media.

It is unfair to tell a teen who is being bullied on one platform to stop using Facebook, she said, which might form the basis of a support system. “It blames the victim.

“We take the approach that it is better to help youth navigate what is going on in their lives rather than banning it. As a parent, the tendency might be to take the phone away. But we know that social media is not a separate thing to them, it is part of their lives.”

Planned Parenthood has been getting requests from Ottawa high schools on courses specifically aimed at helping adolescents navigate social media. Some of that involves talking about consent and sexting and sharing of photos, as well as issues such as gossiping, cliques and group messaging. Social media, said Dobson-Hughes, makes it much easier to facilitate the “normal, natural behaviour” of youth, sometimes with negative results.

Dobson-Hughes said the new provincial sex-ed curriculum, to be introduced in the fall, does a good job of addressing some of the pitfalls of social media and how to navigate it.

Brontë McGillis was involved in Insight Theatre, a program run by Planned Parenthood in which high school students present skits about sexual health issues at schools around the city. It was a great way to think about the issues and talk about them, said McGillis.

Sampasa-Kanyinga, meanwhile, said the research findings — that students with poor mental health are bigger users of social networking sites — suggests an opportunity for public health to reach them where they are and provide support.

Social networking is not necessarily bad for teens, he said, “but it depends on how we use it and kids need to know how to use it safely.”