Social Media'S Impact On Young Women 1

SOCIAL MEDIAS IMPACT ON YOUNG WOMEN
Social Medias Influence on Young Women and Their Body Image

Samantha Colonna
Tallwood High School
December 16, 2015

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover Page...1
Table of Contents.....2
Abstract3
Introduction......4
Limitations...5
Methodology.6-7
Literature Review...8-10
Discussion.11-15
Rise of Social Media
Body Standards
Early Development
Development of Eating Disorders
Medias Standard of Beauty
Survey
Conclusion16
Annotated Bibliography...17-18
References19-22

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Abstract
Over the past decade, social media has grown wildly popular worldwide. Social media
serves as one of the most powerful tools to lead young women into believing such standards of
feminine beauty that are unreachable for the average women. This paper explicitly focuses how
social media exposes young women to such standards and the impact it can have on their
everyday lives. This research has been completed by examining and analyzing articles and essays
found online. Also a survey was conducted observing results collected from high school students.
The online survey asked about how they personally feel about their body image and what impact
social media has on how they perceive their own body. Through all these aspects listed above,
the researcher was successfully able to conduct my research paper.

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Introduction
Social Medias Influence on Young Women and Their Body Image
Thinspiration is a commonly used word associated with teenagers and young women
today. Although thinspiration is not a word listed in the dictionary, it seems to have a
considerable meaning to young women who are unhappy with their bodies. According to the
Collins Dictionary, thinspiration is the use of body images to inspire weight loss. A considerable
amount of young women use thinspiration very extremely to lose weight. After looking through
an extensive amount of thinspiration blogs, the researcher concluded thinspiration is considered
to be a huge part of these young womens lives. Some examples of thinspiration pictures
included a skeletal looking young girl with a caption that would usually include a motivation for
weight loss such as, do it for the thigh gap. One popular fad among young women is the thigh
gap which is having a gap between your thighs when you place your feet together when
standing. Thinspiration pictures illuminate how ideally a person should look and encourage
young women to go to extreme measure to look beautiful, such as the thigh gap.
The foundation of thinspiration is most commonly found on social media which has
grown widely popular in the past decade. Social media has apps including Instagram, Tumblr,
and Facebook. These sites have introduced young women across all societies with standards of
feminine beauty and accentuating the ideal body image. Young women are currently being
heavily influenced as to how they should ideally look whether it is scrolling through their
Instagram feed or reading a recent blog post on their favorite site. Young women feeling
pressured to attain this ideal body creates a result of negative consequences. Young women are

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measuring their own beauty on what the internet considers to be beautiful rather than what
they view in the mirror to be beautiful.

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Limitations of Study
Knowledge. The researcher is not an expert on the topic and is collecting data and
information that she finds relevant to the research paper with a lack of firsthand knowledge and
experience.
Time. With the researcher being a full-time high school student, she am unable to devote
as much time as she would like in both researching and writing this paper. A considerable
amount of research and excessive amounts of time often take months to years to complete a
structured research paper. The researcher only has a mere 2-3 months to complete all my
research and conduct a paper from it. The researcher has dedicated a large portion of her time in
getting the most out of research and writing the paper to the best of her ability, but time is
something that the researcher is limited on while conducting this paper.
Bias. The researchers topic analyzes how social media influences how young women
view their bodies with a strong view on the topic, so bias will be present in the research. The
researcher will encounter views arguing against the topic, therefore the researcher will come
across as bias.

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Methodology
The research will be conducted online. The findings of how young women view their
bodies as a result of social media will be mostly found from online sources such as articles,
surveys, and research papers completed by college professors. The majority of my research done
was qualitative including interviews, surveys, research papers, and informational articles. Using
online research linked the researcher to young women dealing with this issue first-hand. It
provided detailed explanations as to how social media evokes body dissatisfaction within young
women today. All of the resources found were relevant in the research and provided much detail
about the topic allowing the researcher to write this paper.
A survey was conducted online that questioned if people felt positively or negatively
about their own bodies. There were a wide variety of answers to the questions presented. The
online survey was targeted specifically towards high school students. After collecting the results
of mthe survey, the researcher took this into consideration while writing this research paper.
The survey included six questions:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Do you generally think you have a positive or negative sense of body image?
As youve gotten older, have you become more or less self-conscious about your body?
If you feel insecure about your body image, what do you think the main cause is?
Does social media generally have a positive or negative impact on how you feel about
your body image?

5. How often do you have a negative thought about your body?
6. Describe how you feel about your body in a few words.
Literature Review

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Body Image
How you depict yourself in your mind is your body image. This consist of how
you feel about your body, including factors such as height, weight, and shape (Body
Image). A negative sense of body image can include a distorted perception of your true
shape, meaning you perceive different parts of your body unlike how they actually are
(Body Image). People who view their body as unsatisfactory usually will not seek healthy
nutrition to improve their bodies, but will develop eating disorders such as fasting,
constant dieting, or binging (Good Therapy, 2014).
Female Body Image in Social Media
Social media has grown by 176 million user in the past year and is becoming
overwhelming popular among todays youth. Facebook introduces 500,000 new profiles
each day, and 6 new profiles each second (Regan, 2015). Active Facebook users are
posting around ten million new photos every hour allowing the opportunity for young
women to compare themselves negatively to others. (Fardouly, & Yager, 2015). As long
as young women have access to social media, they are exposed to the ideal beauty and
body dissatisfaction and eating disturbance is present. (Hargeaves and Tiggemann, 2003).
Images presented through media showing thinly looking women and attractiveness can
negatively alter womens mood and create body dissatisfaction (Heinberg, & Thompson,
1995). With the introduction of social media, young women are no longer comparing
themselves to realistic bodies types. Instead we are comparing our bodies to socialnetworked strangers and celebrities all who have been photoshopped to the highest
extreme (Wiseman, 2012). All of the images you see in magazines of celebrities have
been significantly altered and has left little to no evidence of real curves, hair, or skin
(Phelan, 2012). Young women are comparing their own bodies to an image on social

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media that simply is not realistic for the average women to achieve. As long as young
women have access to social media, women will diminish themselves by constantly
comparing their bodies to others they view on social media (Nauert, 2015).
Social Comparison Theory
A social comparison is the comparison between oneself and others. This
comparison can influence peoples judgements, experiences, and behavior (Corcoran,
Crusius, & Mussweiler, 2011). There are two types of social comparisons: upward and
downward comparisons. Downward comparisons occurs when people compare
themselves to someone who is less proficient to them. Upward comparison occurs when
someone compares themselves to someone who is more proficient. Upward comparison
are mainly made by young women whom they view as more attractive and who fit the
ideal modern day beauty standards. These women can be found mainly on social
media, television, and magazines. Such comparisons made by young women often lead to
body dissatisfaction and body image distress (Whitbourne, 2015). The process of social
comparison may provide the mechanism by which exposure to media images induces
negative effects (Tiggemann, & Slater, 2003). Upward body-centered comparisons are
one of the main influential factors leading to body dissatisfaction within young women.
When some young women are exposed to social media and the images that are posted, it
can results in upward comparisons made and greater body dissatisfaction.
Eating Disorders
Hospital admission for eating disorders has risen by 16% from last year. The
biggest increase was amongst girls aged 10-15, which rose 69% from last year (York,
2013). Idealistic body types in social media have been portrayed as a factor in
encouraging eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia. Current research has

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provided the role of social media is influential in triggering these disorders. Research has
shown eating disorders are becoming viral through social networks by providing tips and
advice through pro-anorexic websites (York, 2013). Various social media serves as a
reinforcer to negative behaviors among young women who are dissatisfied with their
bodies. Project EAT reported that 19% of high school girls reported chronic dieting and
57% engaged in unhealthy weight control behaviors (Gallivan, 2014).
Discussion
Rise of Social Media
Social media had been widely introduced within the past decade and became an
important role to everyday life. It is reported that 71% of teenagers and young adults use more
than one social networking site (Lenhart, 2015). These networking sites include Facebook,
Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Google+. Vine, Tumblr, Pinterest and Youtube. The most
commonly used social media among young adults is Facebook which is an astonishing 71% of

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all young adults (Lenhart. 2015). Both teenagers and young adults are becoming exposed to
multiple social networking platforms allowing more exposure to harsh criticism. With Facebook
being the most commonly used social media platform, it is also significantly female users rather
than male users (Guimaraes, 2015). With females using social media more frequently compared
to men, they are being exposed to images that influences the way they view their bodies by
viewing their peers profile or looking at images. Although social media platforms have many
negative attributes, there is an attempt to monitor what people are viewing. Over the past year or
so, social networking sites have attempted to limit what the user sees on their screen. A widely
known social media website and app, Pinterest, has updated their policies and protecting
pinterest users from what they view to be inappropriate. One of the major controversies is
thinspiration and pinterest has taken it into their own hands to protect the user from viewing
thinspo pictures because they seem to be high inappropriate and are motivating young women
to lose weight by achieving dangerously thin bodies and unhealthy techniques.
Body Standards
Such standards presented to women are completely unachievable for the average woman to even
reach. The average American women is about 54 and weighs somewhere around 141lbs, and the
average model is 510 and weighs 110lbs (Gallivan, 2014). Young women compare themselves
to models in magazines and runways when their bodies are for the most part are unattainable for
the average women to reach. All women come in different shapes and sizes which also impacts
how much muscle they can gain, the amount of body fat, and how fast their metabolism is. With

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different factors that contribute to a young womens overall body image, they are ought to
believe they should reach a model status body type when realistically, everyone is a different
shape and size. According to the Social Issues Research Center, The current media ideal of
thinness for women is achievable by less than 5 percent of the female population.
Early Development
In the beginning of female development, concerns with ones body image often raises
issues. Starting at an age of eight, children can experience the dissatisfaction with their size and
shape which creates a higher risk of eating disorders and body dissatisfaction in their teens and
early adult years (Boseley, 2015). According to the National Eating Disorder Association, 42
percent of 1st and 3rd grade girls say they want to be thinner, and 81% of 10 year olds are afraid of
being fat. At the end of elementary school, 50% of young girls are dissatisfied with their weight
and the way they look due to sociocultural factors (Gallivan, 2014). With the rise of social
networks and technology in the past decade, children will be exposed to ideal body images at an
even younger age than ever before. A study has shown that 59% of children are using social
networking sites (such as Snapchat, Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram) by the age of 10 years
old and that 21% of the children have posted negative comments starting at the age of 11
(Children use Social Media, 2014). Children have access to social media sites such as Instagram
and Twitter where celebrities are followed by millions of people. Celebrities such as Taylor
Swift, Kim Kardashian, and Beyonc can be found on Instagram with millions of followers. This
allows the youngest generation to idol the romanticized media and are deluged by the images of
unrealistic body shapes. Children are being influenced by social networks at such a young age
which will only lead to further complications in the near future.

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Development of Eating Disorders
Social media can negatively impact young women in many ways, but eating disorders
stood out to the most to the researcher. Around 8% of the United States population are currently
suffering from an eating disorder that is nearly 24 million people (Eating Disorders, 2015).
Two widely known eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. Anorexia nervosa
involves a distorted perception of who your body actually looks called dysmorphia. Young
women who have this disorder strictly restrict the amount of food they consume and excessively
exercise. Some evident warning signs are: underweight, refusal to eat, over-exercise, and
unhealthy skin, hair, and nails. Bulimia is much more complicated to detect. People who suffer
with bulimia are usually normal sized or can be overweight. They first start by binge eating by
eating a large amount of food in a short amount of time. After binge-eating, they will usually
fast, exercise, induce vomiting, or take laxatives to gain control over their weight. Some warning
signs are: weight fluctuations, over-exercise, sneaking food, and unhealthy skin, hair, and nails.
With the number of people gaining disorders increasing each year, social media is encouraging
such behaviors. Popular actresses and pop stars such as Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen twins both
have had a past with struggling with eating disorders and having to enter rehab. Some young
women may idolize these actress when they serve as a negative role model to follow. Research
has shown that eating disorders can be transmitted like a virus through social networks, with
pro-anorexic websites provide tips, advice, and online community for unhealthy weight
management (York, 2013). After finding out that young women are being encouraged to form
eating disorders, the researcher searched and found these websites first-hand. The researcher
searched in Google Pro-anorexia tips and thousands of articles and blog popped up within
seconds. It was quite stunning stunned at the results that were received and the tips there had

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been read from these blogs. The tip that stood out the most was, Wear a rubber band around you
wrist and snap it when you want to eat. Food = pain. Immediately, sympathy was felt for the
handful of young women who are encouraged through social media how a simple fundamental
human need should be frowned upon and encourage ones self to inflict pain. Social networks
obviously heightens the behaviors dealing with eating disorders and encourage girls to conduct
extreme measures like pain. The University of Haifa proved in 2011 that the more teenage girls
and young women spend on social networks, such as Facebook, they are at much higher risk
towards developing a sense of negative body image and eating disorders (Rojas, 2014). It is
clearly evident that social media plays an influential role in evoking eating disorders within
young women today.
Medias Standard of Beauty

As a result of media, young women have become accustomed to the extremely skewed
and uniform standards of feminine beauty (Fox, 1997.) Research has only repeatedly shown how
social media depicts women of their flaws and creates a negative impact on the way they view
themselves in the mirror. Standards of beauty have in fact become harder and harder to attain,
particularly for women. The current media ideal of thinness for women is achievable by less than
5% of the female population (Fox, 1997). Media is aimed to help women boost their selfconfidence by improving themselves, but realistically it does the opposite.
Survey
As mentioned earlier, the researcher conducted a six question online survey that evaluated and
questioned 25 young adults how they personally felt about their body and if they did feel self-

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conscious, what was it? The first question given was, Do you generally think you have a
positive or negative sense of body image? An overwhelming 62.50% answered they feel they
have a negative sense of body image. The second question asked was, As youve gotten older
have you became more or less self-conscious about your body? Out of the three answers more,
less, or generally the same, the most picked answer was more with 77% of the participants
answers. The third questioned asked what the main cause of them being insecure about their
bodies and 65.38% of participants answered social media. The fourth questioned asked, Does
social media generally have a negative or positive impact on how you feel about your body
image? 92.31% of the participants answered social media negatively impacts how they feel
towards their body. The fifth questioned asked how often you had a negative thought about your
body and the most chosen answer was once or twice a week with a 40.74% vote. Lastly, the
sixth question was a free response question asking the participants to describe how you feel
about your body in one word or more. A handful of answers were positive saying things like
strong, confident, and pretty good. Unfortunately, most of the answers were negative
saying they viewed they bodies as gross, overweight, and not good enough.
Conclusion
With the rise of social media among the population, research can indicate most young
women view their bodys negatively as a result of social media. The images viewed on social
media decrease their self-confidence and give more reasons for young women to be unsatisfied
with their bodies being not being able to reach the standards of the modern day beautiful. In

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summary, women come in all different shapes and sizes and not everyone is going to achieve the
unrealistic goals social media creates for young women to attain.
Annotated Bibliography
Roxby, P. (2014, October 13). Does social media impact body image? Retrieved October 20,
2015, from http://www.bbc.com/news/health-29569473
In this article, it gives the story of Kelsey Hibberd. It starts of by explaining how she was teased
and bullied when she was younger for being chubbier than the rest of her classmates. She

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describes when she was ages 11-16 as awful. Now Kelsey is 20, and she has created a program
called Loud Education. This program allows Kelsey to explain the impact social media has on
young girls and how it can create body confidence issues. This article also gives valuable
statistics concerning rates of young women and how social media such as, Facebook, can impact
a young girls perception on her body image.
Perloff, R. M. (n.d.). Social Media Effects on Young Womens Body Image Concerns:
Theoretical Perspectives and an Agenda for Research. Retrieved October 20, 2015.
I came across this research article and it is very similar to my topic. This article discuses has
mass media impacts the aesthetics of body image of young women. Being a fifteen page article,
it has a massive amount of valuable information pertaining to my topic. It also shows other
reasons for the dissatisfaction of body image instead of social media. It also shows psychological
reasons etc. This article is very significant to my research paper because it provides many
references and offers reliable information that I can incorporate into my research paper.
Tran, M. (2014, April 21). The Effect of Social Media in Young Girls. Retrieved October 20,
2015, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miribel-tran/the-effect-of-socialmedi_b_5161886.html
This article is written by a junior in high school and which was published by the Huffington post.
She introduces the article by explaining the role social media impacts young girls by pop culture
and mass media. It explains how business can influence young girls that if they buy a certain
product or piece of clothing it can make them feel more prettier or happier. This article is
significant to my research because even though it is not mainly about social media, it shows how

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even other resources can impact a young girl in such a way that social media can impact in a
similar way.
Knorr, C. (2014, April 04). Is Social Media Giving Your Teen a Negative Body Image? Retrieved
October 20, 2015, from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/is-social-media-giving-yourteen-a-negative-body-image
This article begins by introducing how magazines have such an impact on women and how they
view their bodies, but now with social media on the rise, (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat) young
girls are being constantly exposed to the headlines girls try to achieve such as the perfect bikini
body. It also gives reliable statistics about the issue which would be valuable to my research
paper.
References
Boseley, S. (2015, July 23). Basis for eating disorders found in children as young as eight.
Retrieved December 8, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/23/basis-foreating-disorders-found-in-children-as-young-as-eight

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Corcoran, K., Crusius, J., & Mussweiler, T. (2011). Social Comparisons: Motives, Standards, and
Mechanisms. Retrieved December 8, 2015, from
http://soco.uni-koeln.de/docs/Corcoran_Crusius_Mussweiler_2011_Social_Comparison.pdf
Eating Disorders: Body Image and Advertising - HealthyPlace. (2000, April 25). Retrieved
December 8, 2015, from http://www.healthyplace.com/eating-disorders/articles/eating-disordersbody-image-and-advertising/
Fardouly, J., & Yager, Z. (2015, February 4). Facebook influences women's body images but
not in the way you expect. Retrieved December 8, 2015, from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/02/04/facebook-shapes-womensbody-images-but-not-in-the-way-you-expect/
Fox, K. (1997). Mirror, mirrorA summary of research findings on body image. Retrieved
December 8, 2015, from http://www.sirc.org/publik/mirror.html
Gallivan, H. (2014, May 18). Teens, Social Media, and Body Image:. Retrieved December 8,
2015, from http://www.macmh.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/18_Gallivan_Teens-socialmedia-body-image-presentation-H-Gallivan-Spring-2014.pdf

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Guimares, T. (2015, March 9). REVEALED: A Breakdown Of The Demographics For Each Of
The Different Social Networks. http://www.businessinsider.com/social-media-demographicsstats-2015-1
Good Therapy. "Eating and Food Issues." Accessed February 23, 2014,
http://www.goodtherapy.org/therapy-for-eating-disorders.html.
Hargeaves, D., & Tiggermann, M. (2003) Longer-Term Implications of Responsiveness to ThinIdeal Television: Support for Cumulative Hypothesis of Body Image Disturbance? European
Eating Disorders Review, 465-477
Heinburg, L., & Thompson, K. (1999). The Medias Influence on Body Image Disturbance and
Eating Orders: Weve Reviled Them, Now Can We Rehabilitate Them? Retrieved December 8,
2015, from
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Lenhart, A. (2015, April 9). Teens, Social Media & Technology Overview 2015
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/04/09/teens-social-media-technology-2015/?
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Nauert, R. (2013, April 12). Social Media, Facebook & Twitter Use May Harm Grades of
College Freshman. Retrieved December 8, 2015, from
http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/04/12/social-media-use-may-harm-grades-of-collegefreshman/53711.html
Phelan, H. (2012, July 20). ANONYMOUS RETOUCHER SAYS '100 PERCENT' OF

FASHION IMAGES HAVE BEEN ALTERED, CALLS BEAUTY ADS THE 'BIGGEST LIE
OF ALL' Retrieved December 8, 2015, from http://fashionista.com/2012/07/anonymousretoucher-says-100-percent-of-fashion-images-have-been-altered-calls-beauty-ads-the-biggestlie-of-all
Regan, K. (2015, August 10). 10 Amazing Social Media Growth Stats From 2015. Retrieved
December 8, 2015, from http://www.socialmediatoday.com/social-networks/kadie-regan/201508-10/10-amazing-social-media-growth-stats-2015
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What is Body Image? | National Eating Disorders Association. (n.d.). Retrieved December 8,
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SOCIAL MEDIAS IMPACT ON YOUNG WOMEN

Social Medias Influence on Young Women and Their Body Image