Self Esteem And Social Media

Many studies have shown that social media can have a significantly negative impact if used the wrong way, especially when it comes to teenagers. The stage of adolescence is a vulnerable one, which leads them to be more exposed of dealing with self-perception and low self-esteem. One of the reasons people use social network sites (SNS) is to be able to interact with others and to see what others are doing and how they are doing it. As people compare themselves to other social media users, they begin to evaluate themselves and change their own image (Lee, 2014). SNS such as Facebook, tend to give the impression that other people’s lives are better than the ones they have. The exposure of information about others that social media provides to …show more content…
Testing social comparison and self-esteem is extremely important for this study because self-esteem plays a big role in self-evaluation and can influence how people interpret social comparison content. My hypothesis is based on the social comparison theory, which shows that social comparison occurs when individuals aspire to compare certain aspects of their lives with others, whether is an upward or downward comparison (Festinger, 1954). The social comparison theory also states “we determine our social and personal worth based on how we stack up against others” (Festinger, …show more content…
The control group will be assigned to scroll down and look at some news feed of non-social comparison content. Some examples of this content will be pictures of food, nature, animals, or just normal people with little to no likes. On the other side, I intend to have the treatment group looking into news feed or websites that involve social comparison content and focus only on pictures that have a ton of likes. This could be pictures of celebrities, athletes and other people with the ages of 20-27 on social media that receive a lot of likes and recognition. There are many reasons people in social media receive a lot of likes such as being considered physically “perfect” or because they are amazing athletes, actors, singers, etc. In this study, we will focus more on those with millions of likes or more. The reason why I am focusing more on the ‘likes’ is because a new research shows that ‘likes’ appear to be somewhat “intoxicating to teenagers” (Rabin, 2016). The article says, “The same reward center in the brain that is involved in the sensation of pleasure and activated by thoughts of sex, money or ice cream also is turned on when teenagers see their photos getting a lot of likes on social media” (Rabin,