There are millions of people who are doing the same thing when you’ checking Twitter or Instagram. But have you ever wondered how the pictures of others’ bodies (whether it is a friend on vacation or a celebrity selfie at the gym), and can it affect your own thought of yourselves?
In recent years, it has been repeatedly put forward that the the refined photos of celebrities or skinny models published by the mainstream media set an unrealistic standard of “beauty” for us. With all these famous names dominating the social media headlines, it is natural way to think that social media has detrimental effect on your body image.
According to The “Yellow Social Media Report Actions“, females are more frequent users of social media than males and frequency decreases with age. The under 30s young females are checking in most of all averaging 48 visits weekly.
In a study of 227 female college students, participants said they rated themselves negatively when they compared their looks to peers and celebrities, but not when they compared them to family members. The people most associated with body image anxiety were people of the same age who didn’t know each other.
“If people compare their appearance to people on Instagram or any social media platform, they tend to rate themselves negatively,” said by Jasmine Fardouly, a postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie university in Sydney. He explained that people only show one side of their lives online. If you know someone well, you know that they only bring out the best in themselves. But if you just know them, you can’t know anything else about them, you can’t make that inference.
In all, whether the social media will change the way you think about how you look depends on how to make use of the social media. If it is utilized reasonably, it will help to encourage a positive life habit and make us take more care of self health status.
What do you think about the advent of the social media? Does it make your life more positive and inspire you to have a more meaningful life? Or does it cause that you waste time and become negative because of bad comments? Please make comments on my blog and share your opinion with me.
TANG XIAOTING 
Interesting discussion about the impact of how social media has been used currently! I saw some pros and cons on your arguments. I agree with you on the cons that people being less confident of their body shapes. However, I would see the pros as that more women might start working out and eating healthy diets to keep themselves fit, which could become an advantage as well. Thus, this probably depends on each user’s interpretations of the posts. There might also be opportunities for marketers to take certain approaches to resolve the issue.
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Hi Ting, I like your discuss question, I think the social media is a smart invention and that give my life a positive in effect. For me the social media benefit me on building relationships with friends and families. I can contact them whenever I want and share something interesting with them. also, I can search information through the social medias which leaved by other persons that really helped me to save time to do something like the recipe of cooking. Therefore, when marketers can correctly use the social medias to do the digital marketing for getting more profits.
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I’m glad to see you blog about the social media. In my opinion, people’s definition of beauty and ugliness is not just from social media, it is just a medium, and the blaming for the existence of social media is as ridiculous as people blaming children learn violence from the games. As a product of the digital marketing social media conforms to the trend of the times. In the past, people can also receive this information through television, newspapers and other media. So how do you think about my opinion?
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Thank you for your comment. I agree with you that people can also receive this information through television, newspapers and other media in the past. But nowadays, social media spread so fast that people will receive much more information than before.
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Hey XiaoTing, I’m glad to see a different blog post on social media marketing. I’m agree with you that some of the people will be affected by the bad comment and loss confident by comparing with celebrities. However, there is still lots of positive quote or videos that will enlighten and encourage people’s life in positive energy environment. Everything has its good and bad, so in my opinion that what people choose to see and follow is very important.
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I consider social media do more bad than good to people on how they think themselves. Days have gone that many people might humiliate others for their ‘big size body’, which is a good thing. However, things have gone further than we hope for. Now there are people criticizing others for being ‘too skinny’! People on social media always have something to say about others’ body because they feel it is OK to do so behind the screen as no one else can tell who actually did that.
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Thanks for your comment! Social media does have some harmful impact on us, which makes people waste time and miss world around them. So we must make fair use of social media and spent more time on life.
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