Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: When you are so preoccupied with how do I look like to other people?

Do other people thin that my body looks the way I see celebrities bodies look?

Other parts of your life start to suffer.

Social media.

How much time of the day spent on it does lead to body image, dissatisfaction, decreas in self-esteem and unhappiness.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To The Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from a variety of perspectives.

Social media use can shape how young women view their bodies and themselves.

Short form video platforms such as TikTok intensify exposure to beauty ideals and celebrity lifestyles.

New research shows everyday social media reactions, such as commenting or following accounts can build attention to appearance.

Joining me this week are Larissa Terán, director of media research at the Geena Davis Institute, and Doctor Neelam Vashi of the Dermatology Institute of Boston.

So starting with you, Miss Vashi can you please explain how media use is affecting young women's views of themselves?

Yeah, absolutely.

So this is a topic near and dear to me.

I think I started really looking into this because I have three kids, two of which are girls, and I think this reall is an important topic for us to discuss now with all the changes in social media.

So social medi really does affect self-esteem, and we see that i so many different aspects of it.

Mine is related to beauty and that's what I study.

But it's largely done through comparison.

So and what's driving about this is not just a compariso with influencers or celebrities.

It's a comparing themselves to their friends, colleagues and then increasingly a comparison to themselves, and often filtered o altered versions of themselves.

So when someone you know will take a selfie, they run it through a filter.

They look in the mirro and feel like something's wrong with what they see, that that poses a problem.

And this is, you know, we can call it a new psychological dynamic, but really now, you know, it's been going on for, you know, ten years or so.

So it's newer.

But it's somethin just that we haven't seen before in prior generations.

So it's you know, really compounded by the algorithms the mechanics of the platforms.

So there's this compariso and then there's also the likes, the follows, the comments.

And that can also lead to this, decrease in self-esteem and one's worth because they're just associating appearance or self-worth with versions o themselves, versions of others, and then comments.

Are those the problems you were referring to earlier, or are there other problems created by seeing themselves on social media as well?

Yeah.

So I think it's—a lot of it is just with the comparison.

So you know, one's appearance.

So we all like to look at beautiful things.

And I've done— that's a lot of my research, its just the study of beauty.

So when people are looking at, you know, themselves but then they make an altered version of themselves or they start looking at celebrities or photographs that are professionally done then filtered, they start getting a warped view of reality and of what beauty really is.

It turns appearance into, you know, this form of like social currency almost, because then they're seeing, oh, how many likes and how many followers and how many comments did I get on this new photograph I posted.

And it's just—it quietly, but very apparently kind of shifts what people consider normal, what they consider to be ideal or acceptable in how they look themselves and how others look.

How is this any different from what has gone on for at least a century with touched up photographs?

I mean, everybody looks better in a touched up photograph.

And playing around wit images is not a brand new thing.

It's new on social media because social media is new, but it's not new.

So what happened when people back in the 50s or 30s saw pictures taken by professional photographers with proper lighting, with proper focus.

Did the same effect occur?

Yeah, the same effect is always occurring.

The issue with social media is the repetitive nature and how quickly it happens.

So, you know, yes, in the 50s.

Yeah.

All of that technolog were in the hands of very few.

So few people could have the ability to be tweaked and altered for this glamorized version of themselves.

And that's what we would look at in magazines.

And that became an ideal.

Now it just becomes so amplified with social media that technology is now— that was in the hands of very few and took a long time to produce—is instantaneous.

Everyone can do it.

It's repetitive and it's very easy.

So now we're constantly bombarded with all these filtered, augmented, altered photographs that are just so easily done.

So that is the bigges difference that it's available.

It is fast and it's very easy to get caught up in that.

And people will now spend, you know, before maybe in the 50s, we grab a magazine and then look at one magazine of these beautiful people throughout the week.

Now it's spending an hour or two hours, three hours.

It's this passive just viewing of social media that's occurring, and its so much just ingrained in our minds then.

Now, your thoughts, Dr.

Terán, what are you saying seeing as the impact of social media on girls views of themselves and their beauty.

I definitely agre that it's the repetitive nature of social medi that is different from before.

So the effects that we're seeing from social media in regards to self-esteem and body comparison and appearance ideals, these are not new concepts.

These are things that we have seen from television, movies, music videos, magazines, ads.

We've been seeing this before, so it's not new.

But what is new about it is that it's constant and it's repetitive, and it happens from a very, very young age among adolescent girls where it's something that developmentally they carr with them into young adulthood.

So it's really we're really seeing long term, a long term impact of this social media usage.

And there's also a lot of different behavior to consider from social media.

So it's not just using social media, but what are the different types of things you're doing on social media that are more interactive that you don't really se in traditional types of media?

And all of that kind of leads to young women just thinking about what they look like, evaluating themselves, thinking about their body, about their appearance to a very unhealthy amount.

So we shouldn't actually be thinking so much about what we look like because it's not healthy.

It kind of makes you neglect other important parts of yourself.

So you start thinking too much about yourself from the observer's perspective.

You're constantly thinking, living your life, not even living, not even o social media, but because of it.

You go on living your life constantly thinking, how does my hair look?

How?

Let me see.

Let me look at my reflection in the mirror when I'm walking down the street.

Is my tummy tucked in?

I look bigger than I would like today.

So you're constantly thinking about yourself with the term called self objectification.

You start neglecting your traits, your personality, the things you're good at.

You start neglecting that.

So that's what's the most concerning parts that I'm seeing about it.

You're talking about things where girls are becoming more preoccupied with how they look, Exactly.

and how pretty they are.

How does that hurt them?

Well, first of all, we know that doing that leads to body dissatisfaction.

It leads to self-esteem issues.

It leads to eating disorders because you are not— You're never truly content with the way that you look.

But I think that the biggest most harmful thing about always thinking about how you look is that you neglect more important parts to yourself.

So you are—that is your number one priority as a young woman, how do I look like to other people?

Do other people think that my body looks the way I see celebrities bodies looks or whatever.

And research show that when you are so preoccupied with doing that, other parts of your life start to suffer.

So your relationships, you start to withdraw from your relationships becaus you're just so hyper focused on that.

One of the most newest outcomes of that that I have witnessed in my own research is that you become withdrawn socially because you're so hyper focused, you may start to get perhaps insecure and just say, you know what, I'm not going to go out today.

And it's all a subconscious process.

When I describe medi effects, it's very subconscious.

So you don't really make that connection in your head when it's happening.

It kind of just happens.

And we know it happen through the research that we do.

Doctor Vashi, you have two daughters.

Did you see—before you read the research, did you see these kinds o changes in your own daughters?

So my children are young.

So I'm kind of trying to get in before it all happens.

You know, there' a vulnerability that we all have and it kind of shifts with our life stages.

So adolescents.

So my oldest daughter is ten.

So she's, you know starting to really be interested in all these, you know, skin creams.

And, you know it puts me in a tough position as a dermatologist, trying to advise her and help her, you know, make healthy habits opposed to unhealthy habits.

But when we loo at vulnerability, adolescents, young girls in particular, young adults are at most risk because that is when they'r really forming their self-worth, their identity.

And that's when this can have a larger effect on them kind of like an outsized effect.

Now when someone is older, middle aged, like myself, you know, the pressures change.

And since we have our self-worth established, you know, it's still an issue.

And yes, we, you know, becoming heavily engrossed in or heavily consumed by appearance can lead to— yes, I totally agree— not doing other things that are important.

When you say other things that are important, are you suggesting girls should study harder, do better in school and not worry so much about what they look like?

So I'll give you an example.

So let's say like, you know, I saw some girls going out and they were getting ready and, you know, a couple were just doing their makeu the whole time.

That is like it.

That kind of shows that instead of the social interaction of engaging and talking, instead it's being focused o getting ready for the evening.

I think that could be an example of other things per se.

And so it can be anything.

It could be, yes, education, focusing on ones studies, focusing on health interactions, you know, playing outside instead of being on social media, looking at filtered images.

So it's a wide range of what i healthy for the mind and body.

That is not— Yes, definitely.

Education, studying, learning, reading.

But it's also just bein with one another, being outside, social engagement that's not focused on, you know, aspects of appearance.

Are there any studies, I'm just curious, that show that girls who engage in a lot of social media use, especially at particular ages in their early teens or something, are less secure than girls who don't?

You know, I can't rattle off the exact study, but, I mean, there's lots of studies, lots of literature show that, yeah, social media— how much time of the day spent on it does lead to body image dissatisfaction, decrease in self-esteem and unhappiness.

Doctor Terán, your thoughts about how much this impacts girl views of themselves physically.

Yeah and I really want to emphasize, I think there's absolutely nothing wron with caring about how you look.

It's—you should, I mean, we're human.

I think tha if you like putting makeup on, if you like picking an outfit, doing your hair, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

But when it become harmful is when women and women are more likely than men and girls, more likely than boys are constantly in this state of self objectification, where that's, I think, what the key difference is.

You'r treating yourself as an object.

So much so that I'm sure if I could do a quick search, find you a study that you asked for, where we could link perhaps social media to these outcomes.

But I do know off the top of my head that self objectification leads to thi relational burden in real life.

So you get negative effects from this state of self objectification with variables that I've looked at such as relationship initiation.

So you're less likely to go out and initiate a relationship in real life, and you're also less likely to—more likely to socially withdraw from interactions in life.

So it's kind of lik an indirect effect, I would say.

So perhap social media leads to this state of self objectification among young women, because they're constantly in this state of thinking about what they look like to other people, which then leads to these more concerning outcomes socially.

Now, have you or any other experts in your field come up with the best ways for friends, for mothers, for relations of these young women to counter the impact of social media?

Or is it just such a thin that is so big and so prevalent and so impactful in so many different areas of self-worth that you can't quantify it?

What are the best ways to alert them to the fact that this is something your mind is going to do to yourself, that doesn't really have any impact at al on your worth in the real world, and this is something you should treat lightly, not take it so seriously.

Yes.

So we do know that younger people are more vulnerable.

So young girls, because children go through these major developmental milestones that really help them develop their sense of self.

So they're being socialized by the world around them.

And by the time they reach adulthood, they should have a strong sense of self shaped by all of these moments, social media included.

And I think it's unrealistic to say that social media platforms should have, like, have a responsibility to children, because we also know from research that if certain images in advertisements, for example, are photoshopped and they have a disclaimer on the bottom like this is digitally, digitally retouched, and if people see that, it doesn't really make a difference.

They're still very critical of themselves.

They're still— They— It doesn't matter if they have a label or not.

So I think that's unrealistic.

So I think that the best thing to counter these negativ effects is early conversations with children at hom and leading by example at home.

I think it is really up to parents that should establish things such as healthy eating behaviors, avoiding negative talk about their own bodies, helping children focu on important parts of themselves that aren't completely about what they look like, and parents being aware of their children's social media habits.

Because we also know that we can't say for sure that using social media leads to these habits.

But we know things like, from my own research, we know tha the types of accounts you follow are influentia in determining these outcomes, like self-esteem and cosmetic surgery.

So following certain accounts.

So being attentive to wha accounts your children follow, leaving certain comments is also something that can be influential.

So as a parent really monitoring that.

And I also think it's unrealistic to just like yo said, take it away completely.

So kind of like teachin your child about media literacy from a young age is one of th most realistic options, I think.

And your thoughts, Doctor Vashi.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love that terminology, media literacy, because that's what it is.

It is completely unrealistic to take away social media, and that will just cause a young person to want to even engage in i more and then find other avenues to do it.

So that's not really the answer.

Social media is not going anywhere.

And don't even think it's necessary.

I just thin what we have to think about is, is the use and how we're using it.

It should be intentional use.

Curating one's feed, unfollowing accounts that make someone feel worse.

And then, you know, I think a lot of this is this passive scrolling.

So put limits on it.

You know, take— take away the social media, like give options to have it.

But then also, you know, after a point we need to just limit the time that's available for doing that, limit passive scrolling because that's really when these algorithms really take hold.

And then all of a sudden it's, you know, 1 or 2 hours later and people are just staring at these accounts.

And then I like the disclaimers.

I do agree that sometimes it's really hard, though, because even if there's a disclaimer on the photograph, people who are viewing it, it's all about the final product.

They still internalize that final product they're seeing.

So yes, having a disclaimer can be helpful just because it puts things into context, but it doesn't necessarily help the the problem in totality.

So, you know, I think, you know, yet following accounts that are diverse or, or have different opinions and are just not only appearance related or are healthy skin, healthy body related.

But yeah, early discussions, love the term media literacy.

And just teaching kids how to use it in a healthy way and modeling behavior.

My kids do not see me passive scrolling.

I have very few accounts and my accounts are very limited, and that's what they see in me.

And that's what I hope they model, too.

And when you say look for websites and programs and such that reinforce positive images of girls, no matter how pretty or not pretty or whatever you want to call it, how attractive they are or not.

How do parents look for those kinds of websites?

So that's very difficult.

I'll give you an example.

I can just use analogies, examples of my own kids.

They like going on the internet.

They like scrolling.

They like looking things up.

So I give them 30 minutes, but instead I say—they do, it's called mystery science and someone—it's kids asking questions and it's very engaging.

I think if we give them something else that's engaging, they will do it.

But we have to help them find that.

So it's not maybe necessarily, sure, yeah.

So healthy content.

Maybe when kids are older my kids are young.

S I can navigate them right now to completely different websites.

But then as they get older and they get more into, you know, exercise and eating and this and that, I think we just have to see what they're looking at, be really on top of it— and which can be really time consuming for parents— and then unfollow accounts that are leading one down a path that is appearance based or unhealthy and reinforcing the ones that, you know, promote diversity and healthy habits.

Okay.

Thank you.

And Doctor Terán, your thought briefly, please, on how parents find websites that promote positive images of women and girls no matter what they look like?

Well, I don't know about identifying positive ones.

I can't speak to that.

I think that it would b a matter of looking on your own.

But I do know about the negative ones, the ones that they should look out for.

And that's: we know that celebrity TikTok accounts, health TikTok accounts and fitness TikTok accounts are predictive of young women accepting—being more accepting or pursuing cosmetic surgery.

So we know that those three types of accounts lead to those outcomes.

We also know that following celebrity TikTok accounts leads to body dissatisfaction, so they become dissatisfied with their own bodies.

So I think identifying those TikTok accounts in your children's feed or who the follow is a good place to start.

All right.

Terrific.

Thank you both for appearing, and thank you for your expertise on this fascinating topic.

That's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

Please continue the conversation with us.

So follow us on X, on Facebook, on TikTok and Instagram.

Reach out to us @tothecontrary, and visit our website, the address on the scree and whether you agree or think to the contrary, see you next time.

Funding for To The Contrary provided by: You're watching PBS.