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This op-ed is about how body image can be affected by social media in a negative way. I have highlighted this piece of evidence because I thought it was one of my strongest pieces of evidence. I included my friend in it who struggled with body image. She got inspired to workout and get fit because she kept seeing people who she thought looked so much better than her on TIkTok. She then started to workout and starved herself because she really wanted to look like those other girls on social media. This paragraph really shows a real life example of someone who struggled with body image because of social media.

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Here is a graph that shows how your self esteem is effected when you go on social media for a long or short amount of time. To summarize the graph below, it shows that the less time you spend on social media the higher your self esteem is and vice versa.

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You have social media right? If you don’t then I think you're living under a rock. Although I don't have Snapchat (thanks to my mom), everyone seems to be on this, Instagram, Tik Tok, and even boomers use Facebook. What I am trying to say is that we spend so much time on social media that it can actually be affecting us in negative ways for example our body image.

An article on the site Science News For Students says “Such social media sites can have a dangerous influence. Teens may already have a poor body image. They also may be vulnerable to eating disorders'' (Amanda Leigh Mascarelli). As teens, we are already vulnerable to hate our bodies. But making teens feel worse when they scroll through social media and see people that might look better, thinner, or prettier just makes it much worse. Now those vulnerable teens feel attacked and have a higher chance of developing an eating disorder. This problem goes unrecognized and if we don’t do something about them now it could result in teens destroying their perfectly healthy bodies.

Girls Health article on body hate tells us how to deal with it. The article tells us, “Body image is affected by a lot of things, including messages you get from your friends, family, and the world around you. Images we see in the media definitely affect our body image even though a lot of media images are changed or aren't realistic” We need to realize that beauty standards are something that not only affects the person, but it affects their whole family too, and these online images aren’t realistic. This is very important to show because most people think that everything on social media is real when in actuality it’s not. Even if they are real, those people might put themselves through horrible things to get looking like that. For example deadly diets, self-harm, eating disorders, and more.

According to an article on ABC CLIO, the more time you spend on social media, the lower your self-esteem score is. The less you spend the higher your self-esteem is. I mean I know without my self-esteem I would be a mess. I know from experience that people on social media can be really cruel when they are vulnerable. You could start developing bad habits by not having your self-esteem. For example, you could start shaming yourself and because you spend so much time on social media your self-esteem can’t take it and your mental health cannot take that pressure. I learned that from health class (I am so smart).

A Newsela article says that scientists have been telling people that social media can be good for some people because it gives them a safe place to talk about how they are feeling and doesn’t make them suffer alone. While this can be a good thing for some people, for me personally, I struggle with being open about my body image. This can help them finally open up about it but on the other hand, people can be really mean about those things. When someone opens up about their feelings someone can bully them and poke at them which some people can’t handle because it might be a touchy subject. Get it? Poke, touchy. No? Let's just move on from that. They opened up and got “burned” by it which might cause them to never talk about it again.

On March 15th I interviewed an 8th grader named Charlotte B and her body is amazing. She is thin and beautiful. (I mean not that it matters but I am trying to prove a point so just go with it) About a year ago she started working out and going on diets. I asked her what inspired her to start working out and she said Tik Tok. I asked what her ideal body type was and if she thought she had her ideal body. She didn’t think she had her ideal body when she clearly has mine. I feel that this is sad because social media is corrupting us to make us not see otherwise. Charlotte goes on social media quite often which is causing her self-esteem to go down. Social media has done her no good because she actually struggled with deadly diets and ended up starving herself.

So my point is that social media is hurting more people's body image than you might think. What do we do about this? Bring more positive energy to social media because you never know what someone is dealing with. Whether it be an eating disorder or a health issue. I know, I know, “be positive” how cheesy or whatever but it’s true so might as well.