3.1 Young people and social media

Listen to the following interview with Martha and Josie talking about the impact of social media and ideas of perfection.

Activity _unit5.3.1 Activity 7: Ideas of perfection

What are the key messages presented here? Write down a few bullet points.

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Transcript: Audio 3: Ideas of perfection

SPEAKER 1

Instagram portrays all your highlights. So when you compare yourself to other people on Instagram, it’s like you’re comparing yourself to someone else’s highlight reel.

SPEAKER 2

Yeah.

SPEAKER 1

So then it’s this constant-- I feel like today in society, everyone is trying to reach perfection, which just isn’t even a thing. Who says what’s perfect? It is unachievable.

SPEAKER 2

Yeah, and I think especially very recently, probably in the last three years, there’s been this idea of influencers. And I think that has just been very damaging because that’s again enforced this whole idea that you have to portray the best image of yourself and influence people. That is what people get paid to do at the end of the day. Is be an influencer.

And kids these days are saying they want to be an influencer. What does that actually mean? That literally means creating the best image of yourself and portraying on social media. That’s so unhealthy.

SPEAKER 1

And it’s just not real. It’s not someone’s life. It’s small snippets. You’ve got 24 hours in a day. It’s just the smallest snippets of the best bet. And it portrays this image that just isn’t actually real.

End transcript: Audio 3: Ideas of perfection

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Audio _unit5.3.1 Audio 3: Ideas of perfection

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Discussion

Martha and Josie discuss how social media has the capacity to present unrealistic ideas about people’s lives and to perhaps encourage other young people to adhere to ideas of perfection. They both criticise the impact that social media influencers can have upon young people in presenting only the positive highlights and an image of their life which isn’t necessary real or healthy.

Unlike local communities, social media contacts can be invisible to parents and other caregivers and it can be difficult to know anything about what a young person is seeing and with whom they are interacting. This can be a source of concern for many parents.

Social media can, however, become a source of support for many young people who are struggling with their mental health, and this will be discussed in Session 7. In the next section, you’ll focus on the role online communities can play in shaping the way people regard their mental health, sometimes in a harmful and unhealthy way.