Social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, X are encouraging people to share their bits of life every single day. While that allows everyone to self express, create content, gain followers and grow their businesses, it also hugely impacts one’s self esteem. When you have access to literally every trend happening around every corner of the world, you try to keep up with it in order to stay updated and not lose engagement. And when you fail to do that, instead of allowing yourself the space to relax and resume, you burden yourself with overthinking and anxiety.
Comparison
Social media often shows the highlights of people’s lives tricking you into a reel world and pulling you away from reality. It is never what it looks like. When young adults compare themselves with these curated images, they begin to feel less than or inferior and that leads to decline in self-esteem.
Appearances
Social Media is full of people looking up to unrealistic beauty standards and constantly trying to hop from one trend to the other. While many people forget to understand that there is no such thing as beauty standards, the majority of them fall prey to the made up perception of beauty. While social media is also normalizing natural human flaws, society still focuses on the flaws. This leads to individuals feeling pressured to look a certain way, maintain an Instagram worthy lifestyle even when they can't afford it and constantly keep losing self-esteem.
Validation
How many social media friends do you really know or how many friends have you really met in a long time? When you forget your self-worth and begin to seek validation from people who barely matter, you disrespect your entire existence. And when there is lack of appreciation or interest by people, it leads to self doubts and lower self-esteem.
Imposter Syndrome
Constant need of validation and the desire to achieve it all as soon as possible has triggered the imposter syndrome in the majority of these young adults. In order to be accepted or liked by people, individuals fake their personality and pretend to be likable and someone they’re not. They do so because they feel their achievements might not be as great as other people, leading to lower confidence and delusional living.
This is the reason young adults are facing mental health issues such as anxiety and depression in their early twenties.
