Introduction
Social media is a part of everyday life for the majority of people on the planet. Accessible from computers and smartphones, it allows for instant messages, sharing photos and images, and offering stories of one’s life and success to others. At the same time, social media has become a vehicle used for harassment, pushing narratives, enforcing stereotypes, and seeking dopamine hits through searching for approval from others. It damages the mentality and self-esteem of teenagers, many of whom feel uncomfortable and ashamed of their bodies, habits, and so forth.
At the same time, in the name of battling against prejudice, bullying, and idealization of other peoples’ bodies, destructive messages are being peddled to the audience under the guise of self-affirmation and positive reinforcement. Examples of such include the propagation of obesity as a “lifestyle choice” while ignoring the advice of healthcare professionals, and representing excessive weight as the new normality. Sources seeking to dismantle the negative effects of social media often neglect or do not mention the effects of hyper-affirmation, which entrench children in their own flaws rather than striving to become better. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the contemporary sources available and see which narrative dominates the academic and social discourse.
Social Media Victims Law Center: Understanding Social Media and Body Image
The first source to examine is provided by a law center for social media victims. The article is aimed at teenagers and young adults without an academic background so that they can understand the scope of the problem. The message of the article can be summarized as follows: many young men and women are unhappy with their bodies; body image perceptions start early; images of people exercising are making men and women more critical of their bodies; the UK has put forward a bill to tag ‘altered images’; parents should limit access to social media and avoid criticizing their children’ bodies (“Understanding Social Media & Bodily Image”).
The way the issue is communicated is rather academic – they utilize numbers and several trusted academic sources, but speak in generalities rather than specifics, without offering any anecdotal evidence or stories to make the message more poignant. One of the rhetorical strategies utilized here is appealing to authority – in this instance, the sources of the information, all coming from research or trusted public organizations (“Understanding Social Media & Bodily Image”). Overall, the article is written in a cause-and-effect style, which appeals to a reader’s sensibilities and leads them towards the cause of action desirable by the author – in this case, following the F.A.C.E protocol.
The logical fallacy found in the source is that of omission and ambiguity. While the article states that children feel inadequate and embarrassed about their bodies, it does not address the source of said discomfort (Herrick 77). Many children and teenagers in the West are overweight and obese. Through manipulation, the article suggests that people putting out photos of themselves working out as “fitspiration,” are making others anxious. The underlying message could be interpreted as a negative one – instead of getting oneself fit and into shape, the writers suggest one should shut off anything that reminds them of their health problem.
Loneliness and Social Distress – An Elsevier Article
The second article concerns itself with loneliness and social distress during the pandemic. The message of the source is that social media bubbles helped mitigate loneliness during COVID-19 in Finland, not allowing people to feel more lonely during the period of isolation (Wang et al. 140). The target audience of the article is academia – the language is very formulaic, with numbers and sources cited in practically every sentence. For the chosen crowd, it does communicate the issue effectively – the researchers chose a question, and have worked towards answering it, in the most unbiased way possible. Similarly to the previous source, cause and effect is the rhetorical strategy applied (Stroebe 23). However, unlike the previous source, the agenda is not as evident, with no fallacies being utilized to push a specific narrative. Overall, the article itself is solid, though it too can be used as a material to cherry-pick from, due to the narrow scope of the research question.
Upward Social Comparisons and Psychological Resilience
The third source, published in the Journal of Affective Disorders, reviews how social media is used by married couples to compare their spouses to strangers on the Internet. The message behind the premise of the research is that social media can be used for negative comparisons unless the quality of marriage is high (Latikka et al. 1). Once more, academia is the target audience here, and the passages are needlessly formulaic and can confuse the unprepared audience. The article mentions certain terms only once and then uses them throughout the paper. These terms, like “high-quality marriage” are often vague. What the article tries to communicate is that individuals who love one another and are happy with each other would not suffer the effects of upward social comparisons. Such relationships, though, can only be accomplished if individuals have solid self-esteem and self-worth (Stroebe 34). The fallacy of ambiguity can be applied here, since the overarching message is that social media is bad because it allows to make comparisons between people, without addressing poor social resilience and a lack of people skills as potential causes for such misuse (Herrick 50).
Neuroscientist – What Overusing Social Media Does To Your Brain
The next source to be reviewed in mass media’s fight against social media is a video published on YouTube, talking about the effects of dopamine when overusing social media, on one’s brain (Williamson). This particular source is present on a social media platform (YouTube) and is intended for a wide audience. The type of rhetoric strategy utilized here is a narrative – the expert invited to the studio explains to the audience how there is a link between social media and what is described as dopamine addiction. The message works very well, with the expert not only appealing to his own authority as a neuroscientist but also describing the addiction as akin to drug users. This is a fallacy of false equivalents, where social media is being compared and associated with something much worse. Connections are also being made to OCD, a very common mental disease, with parallels being made between it and the use of media (Williamson). The video attempts to make people use less social media through the process of demonization of the practice, rather than addressing the underlying issues behind susceptibility towards social media overuse (Herrick 35).
Why Social Media Is Ruining Your Life
The last video to be analyzed in the scope of this paper has also been posted on YouTube and is intended for the general audience. It is a TEDx talk, in which a journalist seeks to demonize social media by exposing how it has negatively affected people’s lives. The basic premise is that people utilize social media to broadcast a perfect image of themselves, with things like glamour, success, and beauty being showcased. It causes people to see them try and strive to achieve impossibly high standards, resulting in severe cases of depression due to constant failures and inability to accommodate them (TEDxTalks). The rhetorical strategy here is the narration, beginning practically in medias res, and making the audience follow along. As it often is with narrative messages to push an agenda, there are some fallacies being committed (Herrick 112). Slippery slope and causal fallacies are the most prominent in the video – the speaker makes a connection between people posting good pictures of themselves to mental issues such as anxiety, or how people perceive their bodies, and concludes that “social media is ruining your life.”
Analysis and Criticism
Although the reviewed sources differ from one another in rhetorical strategies, fallacies, and the intended messages they try to deliver to the audience, it appears as though they all share the same issue. When talking about social media and how it makes obese overweight, or underweight teens feel bad about themselves, they do not address the cause of the problem. While it is true that social media is often the facilitator of such behaviors, it is not the core issue in the majority of them. Individuals with healthy BMI, as other sources show, are much less likely to be negatively affected by “comparisons” in social media (Stroebe 114). This highlights another fallacy present among all of the presented sources – they do not acknowledge the opposing views on the subject. While the academic articles have a literature section to present the issue without bias, the one-sidedness of other sources is clearly there.
There are other reasons for individuals to behave the way they do. Social media is not unique in that regard, since people usually talk about their successes and do not share their failures with the public. They also want to look and perform their best, to project a beneficial image of themselves to others (Stroebe 49). By that definition, every time a person looks at others who are fitter and healthier than they are, it results in anxiety and anguish. The unspoken suggestion to treat issues as the new normality and to avoid social media as a place of unintentional criticism is, thus, a one-sided argument.
Conclusion
The sources presented and analyzed as part of this paper make an argument for social media being the vehicle for exacerbating insecurities, mental health issues, anxiety, and upward comparisons between teenagers. These points are made with varying degrees of compelling evidence and rhetoric. Nevertheless, all of them appear to be missing the forest for the trees – eating disorders caused by poor access to healthy foods, a lack of information, and poor parenting, among others, are the causes of poor self-esteem. If social media does something to exacerbate the issue, its effects are secondary. The best way to overcome the epidemic of anxiety and overweightedness is to channel social media to be a force for improvement, rather than stagnation and self-perpetrated hate-mongering.
Works Cited
Herrick, James A. The history and theory of rhetoric: An introduction. Routledge, 2020.
Latikka, Rita, et al. “Loneliness and Psychological Distress Before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Relationships with Social Media Identity Bubbles.” Social Science & Medicine, vol. 293, 2022, pp. 1-10.
“Understanding Social Media & Body Image.” Social Media Victims Law Center, 2022. Web.
Stroebe, Wolfgang. Dieting, overweight and obesity: Self-regulation in a food-rich environment. Taylor & Francis, 2022.
TEDx Talks. “Why Social Media is Ruining Your Life.” Youtube, 2022. Web.
Wang, Wei, et al. “Upward Social Comparison on Mobile Social Media and Depression: The Mediating Role of Envy and the Moderating Role of Marital Quality.” Journal Of Affective Disorders, vol. 270, 2020, pp. 143-149.
Williamson, C. “Neuroscientist – What Overusing Social Media Does to Your Brain.” Youtube, 2022. Web.