“It’s not who you are that holds you back but it’s who you think you’re not”

Influence of Social Media on Our Self Image

It is a drawback faced by an enormous number of people as they think they are not a person who is capable of accomplishing heights. This behaviour is obtained from stuff in which we invest more time. In this technological civilization, the thing which we are addicted to is social media. Let’s see how this social media affects our thought of who we are, (I.e) Self-image. Firstly let us get to know what is self-image.

Self-image symbolises

Self-image is the aspect that expresses what you feel about and portraits yourself. It is an outward appearance which barely concerns our inner self. As I said, it is projecting yourself as you want the others to see you and understand who you are. But it is totally different from self-esteem because you’ll not be revealing truly who you are because you are intimidated about your true self and suppress it within yourself.

Social media:

It is a computer-based technology that enables the sharing of opinions, beliefs, and information through the facility of virtual networks and organizations. By technique, it is internet-based and provides users with the timely electronic transmission of content, which includes private data, reports, videos, and pictures. It initially started to be interactive with friends and family. Which later attained a tremendous growth and now it includes business, advertising, learning, chatting and so on.

The reason we tempt to spend more time on it :

The biological reason behind any activity which makes us do it repeatedly and makes the day unfulfilled without that activity is the secretion of a hormone named dopamine, it has been analyzed as the “pleasure hormone” of the brain, it is presently recognized to be a hormone that generates “want”. The study has revealed that social media usage is related to a rise of dopamine level; The secretion of this hormone at the time of social media usage creates it considerably difficult for users to withstand the action.

Life before social media and now:

It was a unique lifestyle before the prevalence of social media. Everyone was left with no choice other than talking to other people and live in reality and being aware of what’s happening around them. But now we barely spend time with our own family members and the same with our friends. This transformation of ourselves has its own impact on our actions and behaviour. The effects may be favourable or unfavourable based on how we deal it. We’ll see those influences caused by social media, you can also make a survey of how many impacts it made on you.

The relation between self-image and social media:

Self-image is already said as how one thinks about themselves. Survey has found that we only speak less about ourselves to others when compared to the descriptions we give to ourselves in social media. This description may be a permanent or temporary one. For illustration: In a popular social media named Instagram, it enables the user to have a biography which is a brief description of the user which will be visible to everyone. It is a platform to upload our pictures, videos in it. We will be expressing what we are doing, undergoing through these images and descriptions in the form of posts or stories. The contents or pics of posts will be a result of our self-images. Few people won’t upload their images because they feel that they are not good enough to be praised by others. We have many impacts both favourable and unfavourable let’s discuss it.

Effect on our self-image:

Though we have a difference between self-esteem and self-image, they are interrelated to each other. When you are a person of high self-esteem you value yourself and this is what makes you a person with a good self-image. Let’s see how both self-esteem and image gets influenced. Firstly let’s have a look at unfavourable effects,

•  Comparison:  

Social media is the networking of numerous teens. 90 per cent of teens around the world use it. When a teenager shares his/ her accomplishments and gets greater compliments, naturally we tend to feel inferior. This is often encountered by teens. Sometimes it need not be an accomplishment, just a post which our friend has posted and gets more likes will make us look unpleasant for no reason. Later you will have a feel of being unloved which eventually lowers your self-image.

•  Seductive:

Teenage people are vulnerable to adult contents. This social media gives more ways to the teen to get satisfied for that moment and make them an addict to that pleasure. Advertising plays a huge role in this seduction. When a teen watches any video its content will be shared and they get the ads relevant to that video. Currently, it has taken the temptation to the next level by means of dating apps. When the teen realises that they have immersed in it, they feel guilty. This makes them have a poor self-image.

•   Depression:

This platform makes teen spend most of their time in loneliness. The higher you prefer it the higher you’re at threat for acquiring or worsening complexion disorders such as anxiety and depression. When you love to be in the virtual world it’ll be tough to get involved in the real world. It has been confirmed that the use of social media will lower your mood and makes you weak towards depression. This lowers the self-image.

• Nomophobia:

It is an intimidating feel of losing or without your smartphone. This is because we cannot resist the usage of the phone and it makes you unfulfilled without your phone. You might have experienced a vibration of the phone even it doesn’t vibrate. This is also an effect of Nomophobia. This makes you feel worthless without your phone. This feeling leads to lowering of self-esteem and self-image.

Favourable in social media

On the other hand, we also have positives of social media which has helped to have a good self-image.

•    Learning and exploring:

Whenever we want to update ourselves by learning new things or maybe having depth knowledge of what we have learned, the best source is social media. This helps our intellectual growth and help us being good at academics. Which in turn increases our value. It is also can be felt that when we explore our passion we get motivated and excited. For me, it is cosmos which makes me feel good even in my hard times and make me a person with a good self-image. This is because, when I get to know more about it, I feel the worth of my life.

•  Opportunities:

Social media provides us with several opportunities to succeed in our career. One such networking is LinkedIn, it is a very useful and promising network benefits graduates to get jobs, students to get internships, recruiter to get employees and so on. Having an account in it feels good about ourselves. The social media also serves as a platform for the exposure of talents of teens like poetry, dance, singing, etc.. This makes us feel a worthy and valuable person. When we get more compliments that feel can’t be expressed in words.

We have plentiful to talk about social media interactions but the fact is how we are making use of it. As we have seen above it is our choice to see seductive images or informative images, waste time or invest time, and what to explore and what should be avoided. Making the right things out of these choices make a person with a good self-image.