Co-authored by Heather Widdows and Jessica Sutherland, University of Warwick
How often have you wasted an hour passively scrolling through social media? You just sit down for a moment to rest, and suddenly half the morning is gone. We scroll almost everywhere: on the couch, while lying in bed, on the bus, while waiting for the bus, or even during a boring work meeting or class. A recent analysis of the results of the 2019 Millennium Cohort Study showed that almost half (48 per cent, n=7022) of 17-year-olds in the UK feel addicted to social media. Girls (57 percent) were significantly more likely than boys (37 percent) to report feeling this way. This is no coincidence. To function, social media needs to capture our attention. Social media is designed to keep us scrolling. Whether it is addictive in a clinical sense is up for debate, but what is clear is that people feel out of control over their use of social media.
The effects of this uncontrolled use are alarming. The Millennium Cohort Study found that among 14-year-olds, there was “increase in social media use associated with online harassment, sleep deprivation, low self-esteem, and poor body image.” These are associated with higher depressive symptom scores. ”1 This is a pretty extensive list of harms, especially when you seriously consider the harms of body image dissatisfaction. Evidence shows that it’s not just teenagers who are affected. A study examining the relationship between social media addiction and body dissatisfaction found that undergraduate women who had more symptoms of social media addiction were more aware of appearance pressures and internalized beauty ideals. It was found that the tendency was high.2
As online culture becomes less text-based and more visual (e.g. Snapchat, TikTok, BeReal, Instagram), we are exposed to other people’s images and videos and need to participate by sharing our own selfies and videos. I feel sexual. Using social media in this image-based manner can be particularly problematic.
Social media relies on our concentration. It works by keeping us scrolling, liking, commenting, and comparing ourselves to others. Much has already been written about the unrealistic beauty and lifestyle standards perpetuated on social media, and one of the reasons for this is that we only present our “best selves” online. It is published on . Unrealistic beauty standards in the media are not new, but the amount of images and time spent looking at them is not. We now spend an average of two and a half hours on social media every day, but recent unpublished research suggests this is a low estimate.
Our attention has become a precious commodity, and social media platforms are working hard to maximize their market share. Gone are the days when social media posts were arranged in chronological order. AI-assisted algorithms curate and curate your feed to maximize attention. This algorithm aims to keep us glued to the screen for as long as possible. By analyzing our likes, comments, and shares, algorithms categorize and narrow down information to our personal feeds. The more we see a certain type of image or video, the more the algorithm sends back similar content to us. This creates a filter bubble, or echo chamber, where more and more similar content grows. For young women, the content we receive is often about idealized faces and bodies, such as Instagram faces or plastic-toned Barbie dolls. If we see beauty posts or engage with beauty content, we are immediately bombarded with attacks. Posts promoting unattainable beauty ideals.
Even if we don’t personally engage with beauty content, social media algorithms still provide us with ideal beauty images on a regular basis, as this type of content is generally popular. It’s almost impossible not to consume beauty content in the visual world. Try it out and see how successful you are.
But social media algorithms can’t be solely blamed for perpetuating beauty ideals. We’ve previously talked about what the “ideal” body shape on social media looks like and how it compares to the global beauty ideal characteristics (slender, toned, smooth and youthful). I wrote about alignment and what it shows us about our aspirations. Impossibly perfect.3 The algorithm’s only purpose is to keep us scrolling, but because we vote with our fingers and thumbs, the algorithm provides us with beautiful content. This is the content we want to see. To address the harm of social media and its effect on our body image, we need to consider why we are so attached to beauty ideals in the first place. Yes, social media algorithms are exacerbating the problem, but so far they respond to human desires, desires that commodify and exacerbate, but not the desires that humans generate.