Effects of Social Media
What do you see when you open a social media app?
A funny meme? A friend’s holiday photos? Or—like most of us—something focused on how
your body looks.
According to the CEPSA Social Media Research Team, four out of nine of us in this very
classroom see something about appearance the moment we open our feed. That’s almost half
the room, instantly confronted with someone else’s “perfect” life and “perfect” body.
“What I eat in a day” videos. Weight-loss transformations. “Hot girl walks.” Plastic-surgery
reveals. All of these clips tell the same story—you’re not good enough yet. They whisper that
there’s a “better” version of you out there, one that needs a little more discipline, a smaller waist,
smoother skin, or a “glow-up” to finally be worthy. And before we even realise it, we start
comparing, judging, and shrinking ourselves to fit a standard that never actually existed in the
first place.
Let’s rewind for a second.
In the early 2000s, body ideals were painfully narrow. Magazines and television shows
celebrated “heroin chic” models—stick-thin women with visible bones and hollow cheeks. If you
didn’t look like that, you were labelled “plus-size”, even if you were a healthy weight. Celebrities
like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie became icons of that “size zero” culture, while teenage girls
were told to “watch their figure” before they’d even hit puberty. Between 1999 and 2006,
hospitalisations linked to eating disorders rose by 18 percent, a number that reflected just how
toxic the beauty ideals of the time were.
Then came the 2010s—the rise of Instagram and the “Kardashian era”. Suddenly, the ideal
flipped. Thin was out; “slim-thick” was in. A tiny waist, wide hips, full lips, a big bum. Millions of
people started chasing the hourglass look—through gym workouts, shapewear, or, increasingly,
surgery. In fact, cosmetic procedures like the Brazilian Butt Lift rose by over 77 percent between
2015 and 2020.
Fast-forward to the 2020s, and social media has made the comparison game inescapable.
During the COVID-19 lockdowns, half the world was suddenly online—and bored. TikTok
downloads doubled. Instagram Reels became addictive. People spent an average of two hours
and thirty-one minutes per day scrolling in 2021—mostly looking at faces and bodies that didn’t
even exist without filters or editing.
Body-image issues didn’t just continue—they mutated. What used to be a magazine cover once
a month became hundreds of algorithm-selected videos every single day.
Now, when we scroll, it’s not just people we know. We’re comparing ourselves to everyone in
the world—the fittest gym influencers, the most conventionally attractive creators, even
computer-generated faces that aren’t real at all. A 2024 study found that 37 percent of socialmedia users report feeling worse about their bodies after scrolling for just fifteen minutes. Think
about that—fifteen minutes of “harmless” scrolling, and suddenly your self-esteem has dropped.
Social media makes it almost impossible to escape. You can wake up feeling good about
yourself, then see one “what I eat in a day” video, and suddenly you’re counting calories. Or you
stumble across the “clean-girl aesthetic” trend—smooth skin, slick hair, minimalist everything—
and suddenly you’re questioning your natural hair texture, your skin, your outfit.
But the most dangerous part? We don’t always know it’s happening.
Filters are automatically applied when you open apps like TikTok or Snapchat. They slim your
face, enlarge your eyes, and smooth your skin—even if you never press a button. You might
think you’re seeing your real face… but you’re not.
Video editing has become so advanced that creators can literally shrink their waist or tone their
abs while moving in 4K video. You’d never notice. And then there’s plastic surgery, which used
to be taboo but is now openly flaunted on social media—lip filler vlogs, BBL diaries, and nose
job reveals get millions of views, turning irreversible medical procedures into aesthetic trends.
Even trends themselves can be toxic. One month, the “slim-thick” look is in. Next, everyone’s
obsessed with “2000s model skinny”. Last summer, TikTok’s “Pilates Princess” and “Hot Girl
Summer Shred” challenges flooded feeds, encouraging people—mostly young women—to
change their bodies for validation disguised as self-care. So we ask again: can you really trust
what you’re seeing online?
This endless chase for the “perfect” body has consequences. We forget how to see beauty in the
bodies around us—our friends, our parents, even our own reflections. If you change how you
look—gain weight, lose weight, build muscle—will it actually make you love yourself more? Or
are you just chasing approval from your peers, your crush, or complete strangers online?
Because here’s the truth: self-love doesn’t start when you hit your goal weight or finally “look
good” in a selfie. It starts when you stop measuring your worth by how much of yourself you can
change.
If you never see a body that looks like yours on social media being celebrated, how are you
supposed to love yourself? When the only “beautiful” people we see are a certain size, shade, or
shape, it sends an unspoken message: you don’t belong. And this is especially dangerous for
younger audiences. The average age at which a child starts using social media is twelve, and by
fourteen, over half of teenage girls say that scrolling makes them feel worse about their
appearance.
If we think there’s only one kind of beauty, then anyone who doesn’t fit that mould feels
excluded from the conversation entirely. But if there was more representation—if our feeds
showed real bodies, real textures, real skin tones—then maybe we’d stop believing we have to
change ourselves to be seen. In fact, research from the Digital Wellness Lab found that bodypositive posts—the ones that celebrate diversity—actually increase body satisfaction among
viewers. The more we see people embracing their natural selves, the easier it becomes to accept
our own.
Social media has connected billions of people—but it’s also connected billions of insecurities. It
shows us perfection, but never the process. It shows us bodies, but never the cost. So the next
time you scroll past a “perfect” body, ask yourself: is this real? Or is this just the highlight reel?
Because you are more than a filter. More than your waistline. More than the number of likes
beneath your post. The most radical thing you can do in an online world built to make you hate
yourself is to love yourself exactly as you are.