Social Media – The Great Deceiver
Society is being manipulated by social media and its influencers.
Instagram is one of the most used social media platforms.
November 12, 2019
“Beautifying” yourself with makeup. Assembling an outfit that will grasp the attention of a follower. The apps social media influencers use to simply add a filter or two or to enhance their beauty becomes not a filtered photo, but a photo that hides the real beauty with some type of barrier. A barrier to making them feel safe. A brick wall that was built from top to bottom to make them feel more secure with their natural features.
They now upload the photo hoping to get a couple of likes or a thousand, and the likes now become the recognition they need to seem beautiful to themselves. The followers now see a close to a perfect representation of what they wish to look like. They feel like they need to look like that person to be attractive or somewhat beautiful.
Social media consists of a variety of websites and apps that enable people all around the world to share and make content. The people you see on social media range from celebrities, influencers, friends and family, and even to the president of the United States.
The most used social media platforms are Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. Those platforms let you post anything you want from how your day was to pictures.
Social media in today’s society consist of influencers, models, and celebrities that commonly post pictures of themselves almost daily. I noticed something about those photos.
There’s an app called FaceTune that a lot of people use on social media these days. They use it to fix what they don’t like about the picture. They even use it to touch up the curves of their bodies or the features on their faces. The followers then see photos of what society thinks is beautiful constantly posted on the celebrity’s accounts. The trend of how to look or to look somewhat attractive is beauty standards.
Beauty standards are what people think they need to look like to fit the standard of being beautiful. The beauty we all see these days are photos that have been edited and perfected. They are always so manipulated it’s become a norm in today’s society.
These social media platforms can also affect people mentally. Followers, comments and the number of likes can alter the way someone feels about their looks and self-worth. Even being surrounded by these people can make someone feel bad about themselves.” They want me to do like fillers, make your Instagram look like this. You need to only use photographers for your posts…,” said social media influencer, Morgan Adams. Trying to be like others to fit in and look a certain way isn’t beautiful.
What’s the beauty in looking all the same and editing your body constantly to look like what you wish to appear? Loving yourself is a concept that is an important message that has spread but hasn’t been expressed to its full meaning. Is Loving yourself editing your nose to look smaller or to make your jawline slimmer? To love yourself you show off the freckles that are on your cheek, you show off the beauty mark that’s above your eye, and you show off the curves you were born with. “Body positivity isn’t accepting that you don’t have the perfect body but it’s the fact that there’s no such thing as the perfect body,” said Brenna.
Social media should be the platform where you feel like you‘re not alone. Where you can show the raw qualities that make who you are. Not caring about the likes but being confident in your skin. Not the followers but knowing the people who support you. Facetune isn‘t needed when the beauty is there when you look in the mirror.
In the end we are all the same. We all have insecurities and qualities we don’t like about ourselves, but it’s up to this generation if we can change these insecurities to loving it and expressing it.
