Impact of Social Media on One's Self Esteem

This essay will explore why social media can impact one’s self-esteem. In 2019, it is evaluated that there may be a whooping figure of 2.77 billion social network users around the world and more than often, people post pictures, things they like or do on social media so that the people around them can know what’s happening to them even if they had not met up for a long period of time. It keeps them connected. The social media forms a community that allows people from around the world to share their thoughts/opinions on products, an incident or things that may interest them. This of course will induce a certain level of impact to one’s self esteem as time goes by. There are still however, much more variety of uses for social media such as searching for health information online or reading the most updates news so that one does not have to trouble themselves to purchase the newspaper and most of it are benevolent while a minority of it is malevolent and can affect one’s self esteem because one often comes with another. It is crucial to understand more about social media and self-esteem because people around the world are actively using social media on a daily basis and some, has been affected on both positive and negative ways.

Firstly, people will be able to seek for comfort/help through the usage of social media. Nowadays, people around the world are seen commonly using social media daily throughout their life. As everyone know during the phase of adulting, we tend to face some setbacks be it in your career or relationship and often, some may never get pas that stage of life and this is where social media works wonder for those who has lost their courage to move forward. There is a campaign on the social media such as Instagram and Twitter on #HereForYou. This campaign works by getting people who have mental health issues to share their stories publicly so that those who has the same issue will not feel that they are alone. Many of the celebrities also took part in this campaign where they shared their personal health/mental problem and how they got over it with the aid of time. There were also some of the popular Instagrammers whom shared a post on their prevailing mental issues. This does not only allow people to feel that they are not alone, but it also allows users to chat them up to have a one to one session so that they can seek help from the ones that has been bravely fighting with the mental illness (Metro, 2017). Many of the times, people often go online to look up information about diseases or medical problems (63 percent) or medical treatment/procedure (47 percent). Also, they were interested in diet, nutrition and vitamins (44 percent) and exercise or fitness information (36 percent) (NBC News, 2018). As more and more people are looking to lead a healthier lifestyle these days, they will tend to search online or discuss in an online community on fitness information and the diet to which leads a more balanced diet. One will not only be able to know more about the exercises that they will be able to do at home, they will also not be so lost in the gym as they have the rough idea to what they are able to do. With all the help one can get online, they will be able to make their lifestyle a much healthier one. To conclude this, it is clear that one can get their questions answered with the help of social media.

Secondly, social media being a double-edged sword also causes people to get depression or self-harming due to cyber bullying for example people leaving bad comment on one’s post. In a recent report (BBC News, 2011) there is a case where a 14-year old teenager had slit his wrist due to being cyber bullied. He began to receive nasty message on Facebook mentioning that he is worthless, and people neglect him although he proclaimed that he was a rather outgoing person. It did not affect him in the start as he took it lightly until it became more and more nasty to the point where he could not take it anymore and started inflicting self-harm. There was also another case (NBC News, 2017), whereby a 12-year old girl whom took her own life because she was cyberbullied. Things happened when she received text on social media platforms such as Instagram and Snapchat mentioning that she has no friends and even stuffs like she should take her own life away. This incident happened for months and her health slowly deteriorate to the extent where she does not want to attend school and even chronic headache and stomach aches. Thus, it is clear that the social media does affect lead to people getting depressed or doing self-harm.

Thirdly, self-thoughts being influenced by the social media. Based on social media nowadays, majority of the people tend to see Islam as a ‘violent’ religion due to the violence that was induce by some of the black sheep for instance like a suicide bomber acting in the name of Islam. Through this, rumors will begin to spread by making people believe that Islam is a violent religion due to this one incident whereby the suicide bomber acted in the name of Islam. Therefore, what people initially thought was good, may be affected by the fact that the rumor that was spread on social media on how Islam is a violent religion thus leading the Malay community to be insecure of themselves due to the rumor. “First, we don’t know how to deal with rumors. Rumors that confirm people’s biases are now believed and spread among millions of people” (Ghonim, unknown). Also, body shaming using social media is another of the reasons that may affect one’s self esteem. With a survey conducted by Yahoo, 94 percent of teen females have experienced body shame, but only 64 percent of teen males have experienced it. There are many ways to body shame someone online using social media. One may post a photo of himself/herself on Facebook and get nasty comments by some anonymous accounts whereby they will comment or send private message of nasty or unnecessary stuffs on their picture. This, in turn will make the user be warier and less confident of their physical appearance which when the truth is that their body is on an acceptable weight but due to the comments, they start to find themselves being overweight (Yahoo, 2016). Therefore, it is evident that many of one’s self thoughts was influenced by the usage of social media.

In a nutshell, this essay has discussed three main factors to why social media affect one’s self-esteem. It is evident that many of the things in social media can have an impact to one’s self esteem. Research done in this paper have point that even though social media may affect one negatively, it may also be beneficial to a certain extent. Despite discussing several factors to explore if social media affect one’s self esteem, there are still more researches that needs to be done and it is also not possible to cover all of the factors concerning social media. In my opinion, it is likely that many of the people who uses social media has a certain level of impact to their self-esteem. However, it is also possible for one to not be affected by the social media should they spend less time on their phones using platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.