RUNNING HEAD: THE EFFECTS OF SOCIAL MEDIA 1

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, I’m fascinated by the effects that social media has on one’s

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 self-

worth (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, it’s 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. It’s 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, it’s 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-à-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 one’s 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 media’s 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 can’t 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 self–esteem 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 self-

esteem 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. I’ve

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. I’ll also admit to asking other friends to untag me in photos because I didn’t 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 can’t I look like ____?”

“I look so ugly. Let’s take this again.”

“You’re so beautiful. I’m 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 don’t post that on Instagram. That won’t 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 I’d 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 feedback—or 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 I’m 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 well-

being. On a self-conducted survey, we spend an average of 8-10 hours a day on social media.

That’s over a quarter of our day. If we were to subtract the time we’re asleep, that’s more than

half of our day spent online. So if we’re spending half of our day on Twitter or Facebook or

Instagram, at some point we’re going to be affected by it.

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References

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instagram-is-ruining-our-self-esteem/

Roberts, Emily. The Difference Between Self-Esteem and Self-Confidence. (2012).

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between-self-esteem-and-self-confidence/

Soltero, Alvaro. The Relationship Between Social Media and Self-Worth. (nd) Retrieved

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self-esteemnarcissismanxiety