Our teens are connected to others online much more than most adults. They have more information on the latest apps, games, social media platforms, and online trends. They know more about technology and electronics than most adults, including their parents.
According to a report published by Common Sense Media, on average, teens spend about nine hours every day using media for entertainment purposes. On the other hand, these are the same teens who spend less than ten minutes talking to their parents every day. Now you can imagine they are spending a huge chunk of their time on social media via their devices.
Parents may cut back on their screen time and social media use by monitoring their online activity with the help of the best iPhone monitoring app or other parental control solutions. But, do you really think you can prevent your kids from coming across several online threats including body shaming just by using parental controls?
Body shaming is one of the most common dangers that your teen girl might face on the internet. When your teen girl is spending about nine hours a day on social media, she will be most likely to get bombarded with hundreds of messages about having an ideal body. These superficial ideas and concepts of beauty can wreak havoc on your girl’s body image if you do not pay attention to it.
Body Image and Social Media
Most parents have no idea how negatively social media can affect a teen’s body image. The same is the case with most teen girls. Unfortunately, we are living in times where every other movie, TV show, TV commercial, magazine, and website highlight beautiful people as ideal.
Photoshopped images of girls and underweight supermodels are known as the epitome of perfection on social media, especially Instagram. Cosmetic items and diet products convey the message to most teen girls that being slimmer and more attractive is the only key to long-term success and happiness.
The effect of the body image represented on social media can be harmful to teen girls, especially when they are young. Research has shown that young girls prefer choosing thin gaming characters over heavier ones. When girls reach the age of 10, they go on a diet to look attractive and thinner. There is no doubt that social media is strongly impacting the young girls’ minds and changing their concepts of beauty and body image.
Teen Girls Competing for Perfection on Social Media
There is no doubt that the media of every kind is putting greater pressure on young teens to look beautiful and become thin. Besides traditional media, social media seems to be having a powerful impact on your teen girl’s body image.
Most teens’ self-esteem depends on getting affirmations from their social media followers. In fact, many teens crave affirmation and validation from their followers and peers on social media and wait to hear their feedback.
Teens spend a great deal of time taking the right picture for Instagram and then spend more time on applying the right filters so the photo can look more attractive. As soon as they post the photo on their account, they sit back and wait for others to like and post comments underneath their photo.
Positive comments boost their self-esteem. However, when something goes wrong, teens can also receive negative feedback and criticism from their followers which results in lowering and hurting their self-esteem and crushing their confidence. This is known as cyberbullying that results in body shaming.
The Repercussions of Poor Body Image
The pressure to always look beautiful, attractive, and slim on social media can have severe repercussions for teens. Many studies have found that when teens are exposed to the images of underweight models and highly-filtered photos of women, they can experience decreased self-esteem and also develop unhealthy eating habits just to become slimmer like those models.
Poor body image can also lead to even more serious health problems. For some teens, poor body image can lead to developing eating disorders, and for others, it can lead to experiencing feelings of anxiety and depression. Teens who were not happy with their physical appearances tended to have more suicidal thoughts than others, a study revealed.
Now, you would be surprised to learn that poor body image does not only affect girls. It can affect teen boys as well. Action figures and superheroes can represent unrealistic body types and convey wrong messages to young boys.
In an attempt to have an attractive and muscular body, most teen boys get into dieting and heavy weightlifting. They may also develop serious mental health problems and eating disorders as a result of getting affected by poor body image.
How to Prevent Social Media from Damaging Your Teen’s Body Image
You may not able to stop your teen from being exposed to harmful beauty images on social media all the time. The use of the internet and digital devices only means that your teens will be more exposed to such fake beauty standards online.
But what you can do is teach your teens to be properly educated about social media and concepts of beauty. Whenever you see your teen watching a movie or TV commercial boasting about unreal beauty concepts, you can switch off the TV and have a discussion with them about those ideas. You can also discuss the unrealistic beauty photos your kids see on social media, especially Instagram.
You can also discuss the marketing efforts used by beauty brands to sell their products on the internet. You can help your teens identify the underlying messages about how a product will make them look beautiful and attractive.
It’s important to make your teens know about the harsh realities that all muscular superheroes and size-zero supermodels go through. You can tell your kids about all those unhealthy measures that these people take to obtain certain body types.
Last but not least, you can also consider monitoring your kid’s online conversations by using Android or iPhone monitoring apps (depending on the type of device your kid is using) and see what sort of beauty messages they are receiving on social media.
When you will help your teen know about the importance of developing a healthy body image, you can significantly reduce the impact that traditional media and social media has on your kid’s mind.