Nathalie Membreno
Benjamin Swett
Writing For The Sciences
2/24/2020
Social Media and Body Image
In recent years, with the exponential rise of the internet, younger generations do not remember a time before social media. Since it has become such a big part of our lives, one can wonder how the youth who grew up with social media will be affected. Nowadays, most young people are not able to get away from their fellow peers who they follow online and see their lives even when they are at home. Due to this, they feel the effects of societal norms and expectations on a larger scale. One of these effects is the way that the younger audience is constantly bombarded with beauty standards that are not attainable to the majority of the public, possibly leading to low self-esteem and body image that can also create eating disorders. Minority groups like Latinos, who live in the United States may also have the added cultural disparities where they not only feel like they do not belong to their own culture’s body expectations, which accepts curvier bodies, but also the expectations of white America that idolize skinny body types.
Social media has been shown to have many positives, like bringing people closer and helping people feel like they identify with others in their communities. However, it has also created a false narrative where people live a perfect world with perfect bodies, families, and relationships. In the article, they describe how unattainable social media body expectations can make the youth feel like they must change their bodies to achieve the standard. One of the biggest groups affected by these is women, and in my article, they look specially at Latina women. This group is at a cross section that not only includes the cultural difference of those living in America but also the health and economic disparities that can lead to lower self-esteem. As stated in my article, “Low self-esteem is reciprocally predictive of body dissatisfaction and perceptions of negative body image, which may lead to eating disorders among adolescent girls and women” (Opara and Santos 2 ). Therefore, this article is aimed at the Latina community to educate them about the effect that social media can have on their youth. This is important specially because most research done on the effects of social media on the younger generations is very homogeneous, with most “researchers primarily focused on White women” (Opara and Santos 2 ). In a way though, because there is so much limited research done on diverse samples, this article could also be aimed at the science community in general, to call for more inclusive research to be performed. This is important specially because by neglecting parts of the population, there could be fatal consequences like not knowing how to help young girls who are struggling with eating disorders in the Latino community. Additionally, this also shows the purpose of this article is to inform and clearly state the negative relationship that comes with any younger person always being on social media.
I was fortunate enough that this article included biographies of their authors at the end. This also allowed me to decide if this study was a reliable source. After reading their academic careers I concluded that these were two women who were educated enough to be trusted to conduct ethical research and come to adequate conclusions using their data. For example, Ijeoma Opara is one of the authors and is an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook and Yale University specifically on Public health. Her past research which focuses on “race specific gender disparities” (Opara and Santos 15) gives her more credibility to the current article. Similarly, Noemy Santos, the second author, does social work at Colombia University and has her research focus on “mental health care advocacy in minority communities” (Opara and Santos 15). Finally, I was able to find this research article on a web Database that was given access to me by The City College library. The specific database I found this through was called “PsycINFO” which includes many scholarly journals in the field of psychology. More specifically this article was published in the “Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences” in 2019, showing the findings are relatively recent. However, this made me think of how the general public who does not have access to these electronic databases would be able to be exposed to these findings. This is especially important because one of the ways to help the younger generations is to have them become aware of the negative side effects of social media.
Throughout the article, the tone is very formal and informational. The layout of the article looks at this issue through many different theories like objectification theory, the intersectionality theory, and then goes into defining eating disorders, body image, and the predictors of eating disorders. The order in which all the factors are laid out is very clear and is easily connected to each other. They even have diagrams that concise the effects that all these terms have and the order in which they can affect one another. Although the authors try to be as unbiased by just trying to explain the findings of their data on the way social media negatively impacts young Latina’s self-esteem, there is still a sense of just trying to show the negatives social media has. I think it also fails to recognize the new movements in body positivity that can be found in many popular accounts more recently. However, I can understand that to get their point across, they tried to just focus on one effect of social media. Additionally, their language throughout was for the most part kept as factual through incorporating the works of other psychologists like “Frederickson and Roberts” (Opara and Santos 3).
As helpful as this article was, I do believe there needs to be more research done on more diverse samples. Representation in the field of psychology can be very important because in the Latino community, culture is something that is prized and cherished. In order to fully understand the effects that social media has on younger generations, the culture cannot be overlooked and is a major factor that could also be implementing the unrealistic standards at home.
Works Cited
Opara, Ijeoma, and Noemy Santos. “A Conceptual Framework Exploring Social Media, Eating
Disorders, and Body Dissatisfaction Among Latina Adolescents.” Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, vol. 41, no. 3, 2019, pp. 363–377., doi:10.1177/0739986319860844.
