If seeing flawless selfies of “Instagram famous” friends or celebrities was not affecting girls' self esteem enough already, the overload of perfectly posed and captioned pictures of couples will definitely leave a girl questioning why she isn’t good enough.
Don’t get me wrong, Instagram is a great thing. It is a great way to keep up with people, advertise, document life events and share art, along with numerous other things. However for most teenagers and young adults, it has become a popularity contest, like most social media. The emphasis placed on how many followers you have and how many likes you get is so trivial.
Instagram is not who you are. How popular you are on social media has no real significance. It is a surface level social media outlet that sometimes does more harm than good. Especially for growing girls who are already dealing with so many societal pressures and expectations.
Importance should be placed on how many people you met in real life and make real connections and relationships with, not with how many people you can get to follow you. Your grades matter more than how many likes you get on a photo. You should not waste your time taking countless pictures of yourself, so you can spend more time editing it in order for you to get validation from others that you are good, pretty or attractive enough. Embrace your own body as it is in real life. You are good enough in real life and not just behind a screen or inside an app. It does not matter how you look in a “selfie," what matters is how you treat people and the type of person you are.
I know I may be asking a lot, but this is a call to all you Instagram-crazed girls to just sit back and really think about the relevance of Instagram and whether or not it will even matter in a few years. You can't put “has 2,000 Instagram followers” on your resume, and just because a lot of people like your pictures does not mean they like you for any other reason besides your physical attributes. Just because you don’t get hundreds of likes on a selfie does not mean you’re not as beautiful as the girl who does. The feedback from social media does not determine your beauty and value, because you're beautiful without filters and not just in pictures.
Besides, the only “like” that matters is your own. So here are my closing thoughts: 1) Put less importance on social media, especially on trying to find acceptance from it 2) “Like” yourself because you are awesome and thats all that matters.
