Influence of Facebook on the Body Image of Adolescent Girls
Media and peer pressures usually influence the way many teens especially girls see or observe themselves. Additionally, the media generally distort their mental perception, which normally pushes them to engage in risky behaviors in circumstances when they feel that they may not meet the stated goals or objectives. Mass media such as Facebook have emerged to become a massive part of almost every adolescent girl. It is evident that self image issues usually lead to a lot of negative risky behaviors such as eating disorders, cutting, drug and alcohol abuse, sexual addictions, and bullying among other threats. Therefore, the Facebook platform is currently exposing adolescent girls to issues that influence normal behavior, thereby, affecting their body images (Choate 304).
A recent article by CNN revealed that many adolescent girls are nowadays exposed to a wide range of images or photos bearing unattainable beauties especially through Facebook. This move has kept girls thinking on how to attain such beauty. Most of them have chatted with fellow girlfriends in order to find out solutions on how to gain the beauty they seen in Facebook. Commentators argue that most girls in America gain the knowledge about social media especially Facebook at the age of 8 and 9 years. This is because many of these teens have internet accessibility at their homes, which make them create profiles on this social media platform. The current study revealed that approximately 75.3% of adolescent girls post their photos as well as following celebrities who have beautiful bodies (Cash and Linda 179). Therefore, these girls are often misleading in trying to achieve such celebrities. They are told many lies and myths on how to achieve such perfect bodies.
Additionally, Facebook has exposed many youths especially girls to drug and alcohol in the believe that they will assume a perfect body. Nowadays, many adolescent girls discuss on issues related to substance abuse, hence encouraging their peers to consume such drugs. Without thinking, many young girls engage in drug abuse behaviors that destroy their bodies instantly (Cash and Linda 180). Chatting with fellow girlfriend via Facebook usually affect these girls to the extent of making them dragged into alcohol consumption and other drugs unknowingly. Moreover, it may appear to cool girls or beautiful girls abuse drugs, thereby, stirring some mysterious thoughts among some girls that taking such drugs would enable them attain such bodies.
Facebook usually acts as a source of malicious thoughts such as avoiding or reducing eating habits would help them reduce weights significantly. Most teens follow such advices, hence forcing them to practice such habits, which lead to eating disorders. Facebook has promoted eating disorders convincing adolescent girls that it’s a normal way of way of life. This behavior is considered to be extremely dangerous as well as life threatening, thus discarded. Many adolescent girls who want to be beautiful or to have a perfect body in order to impress their boyfriends practice these behaviors more often, leading instant deaths or malnutrition diseases (Dill 239). Therefore, Facebook should address such misleading as violation of its policies and thus discarding as well as closing accounts of those people spreading such malicious rumors.
In a nutshell, Facebook has resulted into massive damage especially to many teens across the globe. A lot of adolescent girls, who are active in Facebook are misled on issues regarding beauty and body sizes completely. This forces them to engage into activities that mainly destroy their lives rather than making them. Therefore, awareness should be created across Facebook in order to discard such malicious thoughts in America.
Works Cited
Cash, Thomas F, and Linda Smolak. Body Image: A Handbook of Science, Practice, and Prevention. New York: Guilford Press, 2012. Print.
Choate, Laura H. Adolescent Girls in Distress: A Guide for Mental Health Treatment and Prevention. New York, NY: Springer, 2014. Print.
Dill, Karen E. The Oxford Handbook of Media Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Print.
