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. 

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.