The Internet and Body Image
“Exposure to these kinds of websites especially affects already vulnerable girls who have low confidence while making others feel depressed about their own physique.” the use of laxatives and give tips to girls on how
post and how they look to our friends. A lot of
to hide their eating disorder from parents and
us are even nervous about putting up posts that
doctors. Exposure to these kinds of websites
may prevent us from employment in the future
especially effects already vulnerable girls who
which further adds to anxiety of being accepted.
have low confidence while simply making ot-
A study by the journal Personality and Individ-
hers feel depressed about their own physique.
ual Differences showed that people who scored higher on a narcissism questionnaire are more
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and all other social
frequent Facebook posters and photo taggers
media websites are designed for sharing imag-
and had more Facebook friends. Whether we
es, posts and experiences with the people we
want to accept it or not, we upload photos and
love, but its known that it can get competitive.
posts with the intention of drawing attention to
We only put things online that show the best
ourselves and to show the world how great we
of ourselves; the perfect profile picture and a
are, silently competing with everyone else. Ben-
clev-er caption that is almost always re-edited
jamin Grosser, an artist and software developer
more than once before posting. We become
created an open source web browser plug in that
jealous of those who get more likes than we do
stops the user from seeing how many likes they
or who receive more comments on their photo-
have got on a particular post, replacing it with
graphs and we begin to over analyse what we
“people like this”. He found that most people
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