RUNNING HEAD: THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA

The Effects Of Social Media On Self Confidence and Self-Esteem

Macarra M. Fowler
California Southern University

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The Effects Of Social Media On Self Confidence and Self-Esteem

As a psychology major, Im fascinated by the effects that social media has on ones
perceptions of their self-worth. All of the social media platforms give you a score. The number of
followers you have/likes your selfies get (Instagram), the effectiveness of your resume
(LinkedIn), the number of retweets and favorites your thoughts get (Twitter), the number of
shares your post gets (Facebook) are all ways we value our level of online popularity and selfworth (online). How important are followers, retweets, shares and likes and do they do any real
damage to our actual self-esteem? Do we value these electronic forms of pseudo-acceptance and
online validation the same way we value real-life interactions? Do we actually shut that part of
our life off when we turn off our laptops, tablets and smartphones? Or do we carry this newfound
inflated sense of importance (with our 1.6 M followers) into the real world? Is social media the
new real world?

The Applications

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Tumblr are some of the most
popular and used social media platforms. As of the first quarter of 2015, Facebook had 1.44
billion monthly active users. The microblogging service, Twitter, averaged 236 million monthly
active users with an average of 500 million tweets sent out per day. The photo sharing
application, Instagram, had 300 million monthly active users. These numbers are increasing at
staggering rates and show strong signs of increasing quarter after quarter. With increasing users

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and usage on these social media platforms, its easy to believe that this is indicative of the
amount of time spent on social media websites and applications. With every purchased iPad,
tablet, laptop, smartphone, we gain a new inductee into the social media realm.
So because we are spending more and more time connecting through technology, would it
be fair to call social media the new recess playground? Can we compare these sites to the high
school cafeteria? Would it be safe to say that social media is the new form of validation?

Self Esteem v. Self Confidence

The terms self-esteem and self-confidence have been used interchangeably when referring
to how someone feels about him/her self. While the two are very similar, they are built on two
very different concepts.
Self-esteem refers to how you feel about yourself overall; how much esteem, positive
regard or self-love you have. Its not a quality that changes very much since it is related to a
broad sense of personal value or self worth. People with high self-esteem tend to see the universe
as a pretty friendly place.
Confidence, on the other hand, is related to action, its a belief that you can succeed at
something. Psychologists call it domain specific. Self-confidence is how you feel about your
abilities and can vary from situation to situation. For example, I have a healthy self-esteem, but
low confidence about situations involving math. (This is real life.)

What Causes Low Self-Esteem?

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Low self-esteem is not inherited. There are always external causes of low self-esteem,
which, if detected, can be rectified.
After a child is born, he/she starts receiving external stimuli of various types. Some of
these are loving, caring, supporting and encouraging. But other stimuli are put-downers, outright
insults, doubts, suspicions, and discouragement. It all depends on what a child receives more,
and how he/she takes it. If there is an overload of negative stimuli then the child is sure to have a
negative attitude and low self-esteem later in life.
When a child is growing, if he/she receives too many criticisms with very little
praise, then they may develop a negative pattern of thinking. Depending on the type of criticisms
they are bombarded with, they may, consciously or unconsciously, say such statements to
themselves: I am not good enough. I am not pretty enough. I can never do that. Constant
repetition can only reinforce the negative beliefs making a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you will.
What was only a statement to begin with, soon becomes a core belief. The behaviour then
changes to match that belief and a low self esteem person is created.
There are times in life when a child or even an adult is compared with his/her peer. Most
of the times such a comparison is unfair. A child who has scored poorly in a Mathematics exam
is compared with another child who has scored high marks and is reprimanded. But the scolder
may be neglecting the fact that the low scoring child may have aptitude in some other field. If,
instead of being encouraged for his qualities, he is criticized for his weaknesses, he will develop
a low self worth vis--vis other children and suffer for the rest of his life growing into an adult
who spends their days gaining validation (or lack thereof) on the grounds of comparisons.

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Social Media As The Negative Stimuli

Social media has become a controversial topic amongst many psychologists. They all
have the same question: Can social media affect ones self-esteem/self-worth? Much has been
written about the positive and negative impacts and effects of social media, with particular
reference to Facebook and Instagram. The negative impacts focus on the possible relationship
between negative psychological states and anxiety, low self-esteem and low self-confidence.
How social media users create and monitor their online personas may hint at their
feelings of self-esteem and self-determination, according to an international team of researchers.
"The types of actions users take and the kinds of information they are adding to their Facebook
walls and profiles are a refection of their identities," said one of the researchers S. Shyam
Sundar, Distinguished Professor of Communications and co-director of the Media Effects
Research Laboratory at Penn State.
The University of Salford in the UK did a study last year on social medias effects on
self-esteem and anxiety, and reported that 50% of their 298 participants said that their use of
social networks like Facebook and Twitter makes their lives worse. The study also reported that
participants also said that their self-esteem suffers when they compare their own
accomplishments to those of their online friends. In addition to this, a quarter of participants
cited work or relationship difficulties because of online confrontations, and more than half
reported that they feel worried or uncomfortable when they cant access Facebook or email. In
sum, this study concluded that social media causes low self-esteem and anxiety.

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Sundar contends that people with lower self-esteem are more concerned with what other
people post about them on Facebook. In contrast, users with higher self-esteem spend more effort
adding personal information about their family, education and their work. Low selfesteem users
continuously monitor their Facebook wall and delete unwanted posts from other users. "The
more you get connected to Facebook, the stronger you feel that the items you post - the pictures,
for example - are part of your identity and the more likely you are going to view these as your
virtual possessions," said Sundar.
A study conducted by The University Of Gothenburg in Sweden surveyed 335 men and
676 women (average age 32) to help determine the link between self-esteem and Facebook
usage. A significant negative relationship between the two was uncovered (as Facebook
interaction increased, self-esteem decreased), though the main difference was between genders.
Women who used Facebook were apt to feel less happy and content with their lives.
A study from the University of Georgia finds that social networks play on our selfesteem and to some extent on more narcissistic tendencies. Despite the name social networks,
much user activity on networking sites is self-focused, said Brittany Gentile, a UGA doctoral
candidate who looked at the effects of social networks on self-esteem and narcissism. The study,
published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior, suggests that most people who log on to
Facebook every day may be boosting their self-esteem in the process.
Reading through these studies got me thinking about self-perception on social media. We
(myself included) will go to great lengths to hide flaws that other people are completely
oblivious to. We do it all in an attempt to present our best online selves aka perfection. Ive
admittedly posed at angles to contour any part of my body that was unflattering to me that day
holding my breath and arching my back to ensure I had the perfect flat stomach and leaner

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stance. Ill also admit to asking other friends to untag me in photos because I didnt like the angle
or ask to have a photo taken down, completely. I conducted a survey of my own a few weeks
ago. I asked a few friends to take selfies with me and documented the amount of times they
asked to see the photo immediately after, the amount of times they asked for a do-over and the
number of things they found they hated about themselves. In most of the responses, I heard:

Why cant I look like ____?

I look so ugly. Lets take this again.
Youre so beautiful. Im only going to mess up your photo.
Look at the way my belly rolls. I hate it.

In every one of these instances, I was flabbergasted. These girls were so beautiful to me
and the flaws they pointed out were non-existent. What were they seeing? And why were they
so concerned about looking perfect? Then they all said the same thing:
Please dont post that on Instagram. That wont get many likes.
Ah, the almighty Like. Our score. The determining factor. The end all be all. Now
while I was silently surveying and documenting, I recalled all the times I said the very same
thing. I remember frantically checking Instagram every few minutes after a post to see how many
likes and how many flattering comments my photo would receive. The higher the number of
likes, the better I felt about myself. But if my likes were dismal, I automatically wondered if I
should have posed differently, if Id worn the wrong shoe with my outfit, if I should have angled
my body better so that I could have a Jennifer Lopez-esque booty. It sounds so silly now, but this
is who we have become. Slaves to social media.

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Warped self-perception is nothing new, however. Last year, alongside its now
famous Real Beauty sketches, Dove published survey data which asserted that "over half (54%)
of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty
critic, which equates to a staggering 672 million women around the world." But how does this
affect us when you add social media into the mix? In real life we may spend years trying to 'find
ourselves;' but on social media, with 60 million images uploaded to Instagram every day, it
seems we are all trying to find a version of ourselves that gets the most positive feedbackor the
most 'likes.'
As noted earlier, this topic is incredibly controversial among psychologists. Some
claiming it is impossible to attribute drops in self-esteem to the use of social media while others
(the team Im choosing to side with) claim that because this generation spends so much time on
social media and the Internet, there has to be some kind of effect on their psychological wellbeing. On a self-conducted survey, we spend an average of 8-10 hours a day on social media.
Thats over a quarter of our day. If we were to subtract the time were asleep, thats more than
half of our day spent online. So if were spending half of our day on Twitter or Facebook or
Instagram, at some point were going to be affected by it.

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References

Bloch, D. (n.d.). Types of Depression. Retrieved from

http://www.healingfromdepression.com/types-of-depression.htm
Fleming, Olivia. (2014). 'WHY DON'T I LOOK LIKE HER?': HOW INSTAGRAM IS
RUINING OUR SELF ESTEEM. Retrieved from: http://www.elle.com/beauty/tips/a2531/howinstagram-is-ruining-our-self-esteem/
Roberts, Emily. The Difference Between Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence. (2012).
Retrieved from http://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/buildingselfesteem/2012/05/the-differencebetween-self-esteem-and-self-confidence/
Soltero, Alvaro. The Relationship Between Social Media and Self-Worth. (nd) Retrieved
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Vishwasrao, Prasanna. (n.d.). Causes of low self-esteem. http://www.self-help-and-selfdevelopment.com/causes-of-low-self-esteem.html
Williams, Ray. (2014). How Facebook Can Amplify Low Self-Esteem/Narcissism/Anxiety.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201405/how-facebook-can-amplify-lowself-esteemnarcissismanxiety