How do Instagram Models degrade teenage girls body image?

Why am I not good enough? How do I look like that? Why do models look like this?

Girls in the 21st century are brought up to believe they must achieve these impossible standards. Skinny waist, big boobs and ass. Especially growing up on social media with photos of so-called "perfect girls" pushed in your face most days. Particularly with teenagers who strive to be accepted by society. This leaves teenage girls telling themselves horrible things every day because in their head they can never be better and no one would notice if the left. We want this to change! In 2020 everyone is all about body positivity.  We are learning it's okay to be us. To be a little underweight or a little overweight and step by step we could learn to love ourselves. Sadly we are still on step one and need a bit more reassurance. 
So we sent out a survey to see how we are feeling and if we are ready to take that next stride.

We sent out a survey to the girls of our college and asked them how they felt about their self-confidence and their body image.
The questions involved girls being asked about how they felt about themselves and their body. We learnt that it varies with each question. For example, one question spoke about how girls felt in their own body and most answers were body positive. Whilst, another question talked about how they felt when they saw Instagram models posting bikini pictures and the answers were mostly about how their body imaged degraded when they saw the post.

In conclusion, girls are getting more body confident as they grow older because they start to realise that the girls on media today have photoshop and special diets(unhealthy) to impress the employers. 

By: Ruby and Bella

How Teenagers used Snapchat to Stay Sane during Lockdown.

A bit about Snapchat

Snapchat was first released in September 2011 and developed by “Snap Inc.” The creators of Snapchat, Evan Speigel, Bobby Murphy and Reggie brown first launched Snapchat as “Picaboo” in July 2011 but then relaunched in September 2011 as Snapchat. All three creators were studying at Stanford when they launched Snapchat. Now Snapchat has 229 Million active users and more than 4 billion snaps are sent each day. 

Dangers of Snapchat?

There are many dangers online. Snapchat has a very controversial feature called Snap maps. Snap map is a feature that shows your location and when you were last active. You can turn this off or change who can see it. When you send a snap to a person they can receive it then replay it if need be. But after that, it is deleted. This is the same for chats. If you were to message someone on the chat you would then have to save that message or else it would be deleted.

Our Hypothesis:

We think Covid19 has changed social networks completely. We think teenagers are going to use Snapchat for entertainment as well as connecting with others. We think Snapchat has helped teens over lockdown by it being a source of entertainment and for something to do. By teens using Snapchat, we think it has helped them stay sane while staying connected with friends as no one could see each other. 

Most Teenagers rely on their phones for entertainment. Keeping it on them at all times. But when we are put into lockdown all of a sudden. What do we do?  

We believe the main way of connecting with friends over lockdown is Snapchat. Snapchat has provided teenagers with a way to connect by Texting, Snapping, Videos, Facetime etc...  

Over Lockdown we all had to get used to online schooling. We think we all struggled with this at first.  Using Snapchat for a class group chats helped us along. We used these class group chats not only to talk to each other but to ask for help with schoolwork.  

Our results

We have gathered information from students to provide us with their experiences using Snapchat. Our survey results have shown that 38 / 82 student usages of Snapchat increased. These results have shown that just under half of the students said that their usage of Snapchat had increased. This shows that Snapchat has helped around half of the teens stay sane. 78 students said that during lockdown the main reason they were using Snapchat was to message friends. This also shows us that most of the teens we surveyed were using Snapchat to connect with friends. However, 7 teens said they were mainly using Snapchat for entertainment. We then further investigated these 7 teens and they told us that they had group chats with all their friends and had skype calls and that's how they stayed connected during the lockdown. Three of the teens said they used Snapchat mainly to connect with family. Skyping them, chatting and sending videos and photos, curing teens boredom over lockdown. Out of the 38 students that said their main usage was for messaging friends, 22 of them said they formed new friendships through Snapchat. 

So overall the main usage for Snapchat during lockdown was to connect with friends. This helped teenager stay sane during lockdown.

Instagram Addict

How did Instagram take over my life?
I started using Instagram at the age of 11 and can't even remember my first account!

I post twice a day most days on my spam account. My main account is my REAL account and I post a lot on that too. 

I have one private account which is for stalking my mate's boyfriend and ex's.  
I have heaps of other accounts, hard to say exactly how many, but a lot. I check them every hour night and day. 
I also make up accounts with new names without a profile photo. I check them but I sometimes lose half the account passwords and can't get back into them. So I make more and more accounts with easy passwords.  
Sometimes when I can't use Instagram I cry and get mad and have a tantrum like a little kid. 

When people receive message requests from a strangers and weirdos they can always check the message first and use accept, block or delete. These Instagram functions will keep you safe to block strangers and weirdos. 

The thought I want to share with first time teenagers using Instagram is to block and delete strangers and weirdos because it will be dangerous for them.

How does Instagram negatively impact peoples mental health??

𝕙𝕠𝕨 𝕕𝕠𝕖𝕤 𝕀𝕟𝕤𝕥𝕒𝕘𝕣𝕒𝕞 𝕟𝕖𝕘𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕝𝕪 𝕚𝕞𝕡𝕒𝕔𝕥 𝕡𝕖𝕠𝕡𝕝𝕖𝕤 𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥𝕒𝕝 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕥𝕙?The reason why girls  are photo shopping their photos and changing their Instagram feed is because of society's beauty  standards: If you're not size 2, you're fat, but if you are a size two you're anorexic.. If you have dark or pale skin you're not  appealing to the eye,  but if you're tanned you’re a try hard.. These insecurities come from people like Kylie Jenner, Madison    Beer and Kim Kardashian who are famous for being attractive to beauty standards rather than actually being good at  something. People have commented on  Madison's Tiktok:  “Imagine looking like this",  "Suddenly I'm not hungry anymore.", and "Is Madison even real?".  This is extremely toxic for younger viewers and makes them think of themselves as not good enough because they don’t have Kylie's lips, Madison's waist and Kim's physique. .  

To collect data and get an accurate answer to our question, we will create a survey to send out to every student in our school. This survey will contain multiple questions based around how people feel about Instagram and the way it influences young people. We will also interview some people from varying backgrounds and year groups face to face to get a better understanding of how Instagram affects them personally. Before our results are calculated, we have written our own thoughts on what we think the results will show.

Hypothesis: We think most people who take our survey will have felt self conscious because of someone they have seen on their feed, and will have been negatively affected by Instagram in some way.

After collecting all the data from our surveys/interviews, we have discovered that our hypothesis was somewhat correct, but not as many people felt negatively affected by Instagram as we thought they would.

We had 59 responses to our survey in total. here are some of the answers to our questions:

Have you ever felt self conscious because you don't look like someone on your feed?
           
 -32 people said that they have, and 28 people said they haven't which was a lot more than we thought would.

What advice would you give to someone who feels negatively impacted by Instagram?             
- Literally just look around, people don't actually look like that
- Be yourself, don't worry about what other people think of you because you are perfect just the way you are
- You be you. You can't be anyone else, and don't try to be anyone else.
- Maybe take a break or unfollow the people that make you feel that you're not good enough
- Find the source of the negativity and unfollow the accounts or whatever else to make sure your mental health is ok
- Remember that people only post their best life/self. That may not be how they actually live.
- Delete it if you're struggling that much. Put your mental health first.

Have you ever felt pressured to look a certain way on your feed?

         - 24 people answered yes, and 36 people answered no.
       
              If yes, in what ways?

         - Insecure about my skin colour
         - I feel like I will be judged for posting what I want, rather than what other people want.
         - Because there are so many "perfect" people on Instagram and I can't help feeling like I want to be like them
         - To be skinnier and have clear skin
         - Feel like I need to be really pretty

Have you ever photo shopped yourself to make you look "better"?

             - 10 people answered yes, and 50 people answered no.

Have you ever considered changing yourself in any ways because of someone or something on your feed?
     
             - 27 people said yes, 36 people said no

Have you ever felt pressured to make your life look "perfect" online?

         - 20 people answered yes, 40 people answered no

              If yes, in what ways?

         - Not show any of the bad things
         - like having a defined body
         - Only in the way I look like, choosing the 'best image' but I don't post anything now

Do you ever delete your posts because you feel self conscious or you feel as though people will judge you?

         - 41 people said yes, 24 people said no

             If yes, how often?

         - On a weekly basis
         - Like twice a year
         - Nearly every post
         - Not very much, just old ones from when I was younger and I posted really cringy
                stuff

Have you ever said something to make someone feel bad about themselves?

             - 44 people said 'no', 13 people said 'yes, and I regret it' and 4 people said 'yes and
                 they deserved it.