Facebook is Ruining People’s Self Esteem

Steven Petrov
The Paw Print

Facebook has become an inseparable part of many people’s lives and for the better or worse, this is an unquestionable fact. Many of us spent hours every day, even during work, looking at pictures and posts of our “friends” on Facebook. According to scientists from UK and US, this has more negative impacts on us than we acknowledge. It has been proven that women spent more time in the Social network, than men, which has been concluded comparing the average number of photos and posts that both sexes post on Facebook. The scientist came up with the conclusion that the more people, especially women, look at pictures of their friends the more insecure they feel about their own beauty. The reason for that is the inevitable comparison, sometimes even a subconscious one, that we put our own and our friend’s pictures to. In order to come up with more accurate results and check their hypothesis, the scientists from The University of Strathclyde and from The University of Iowa have conducted an experiment with 881 women. The main goal of the test was to prove that the more active Facebook users have more psychological, and emotional insecurities regarding their self-esteem. The ladies were asked wide variety of questions about the frequency of using Facebook, eating habits, and their whole round lifestyle. As expected these of the participants with bad eating habits, who disliked their bodies, displayed much higher levels of depression and low self-esteem when comparing themselves with other women on the Social network. The scientists stated that these results have nothing to do with the popular comparison with famous good-looking people that the traditional media is showing us regularly. Almost every woman dreams of looking like Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox or any other beautiful celebrity, but the scientists proved that celebrities often appear as too far off objects in our perspective, which makes them unrealistic and incomparable with one’s own self.  However, the beautiful pictures women (who dislike their own physical attributes) see on Facebook are usually of someone they know, which depresses them furthermore and subconsciously lowers their self-esteem.