A female student at Wilsonville High School scrolls endlessly through Instagram, fumbling past the daily parade of flawless photos — influencers with glowing skin and perfectly sculpted bodies seem to embody every impossible beauty standard. These images flood her screen. With each one, a wave of shame and insecurity is introduced, leading her to wonder why she can’t look like that.
The truth is, she can’t.
High school is infamous for being the battleground of insecurity, embarrassment, and self-doubt. That being said, with the emergence of social media such as Instagram and TikTok, and the excessive editing tools at everyone’s fingertips, body image issues are at the forefront of many teenage minds.
Junior Lizbeth Tapia shared her thoughts on the impact of social media: “I feel like social media does have an impact on body perception. Many girls compare themselves to influencers with a good body shape and then try to overwork themselves to be just like them. Everyone is different and has a different body shape, but never change yourself for anyone else.”
She went on, saying, “Being an advocate for body image is always important because you always gotta be there to help others and make them feel good about themselves.”
Keeping up with the latest clothing, hair, and lifestyle trends has problems, but it’s much harder to keep up with trends involving the latest “trendy” body. This is inflated by seeing your favorite celebrity getting plastic surgery and injections to fit the impossible beauty standard, or even editing their pictures to blur the line between reality and fiction further.
While the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic and other trends tend to be relatively harmless, the trend of keeping up a certain body type is immensely harmful to mental health and self-confidence.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, using filters and editing tools has created “a culture of insecurity.” One study of teen girls by the clinic showed that the more time a girl spends on social media the more likely she is to have ‘body dissatisfaction.’
Although this immensely impacts teen girls, one male student, Emanuel Enriquez Granados, shared some observations he has had surrounding the subject. “I feel like social media causes bad perceptions of themselves, people take social media too literally and they think everything is real and true and I don’t think it should be like that.”
He went on to say, “I feel like people should just think about themselves and not listen to social media, I feel like obviously a lot of people compare themselves to social media because I mean we’re all human.”
Especially in light of the news of a possible TikTok ban, talks about the impact of social media are more relevant than ever, especially the bleak effects on younger generations.
Students seem to have many thoughts about body image, and how social media can have immensely negative effects on the perception of body image.