Please prepare a 1-2 page (double-spaced, 1” border) free writing that reflects your brainstorming around a pop-culture idea and/or issue that is important to you. In your free write, please include the answers to the following questions: 1. What is the topic you are planning on writing about? 2. What life stage does this relate to?
The effects of social media on body image in adolescent
Owing to social media, many adolescents have become dissatisfied with their bodies, which has negatively affected their well-being. More than 30% of adolescents have succumbed to mental health illnesses such as depression and anxiety due to dissatisfaction with their body image (Burnette et al., 2017). This has further resulted in an increase in the number of suicides by adolescents as a result of severe mental breakdowns due to body image dissatisfaction. According to Fardouly & Vartanian (2016), the rise in body shaming has negatively affected adolescents’ physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development. Social media overly exposes teenagers to perfect body types and thus affects their body image negatively.
Key Aspects of Development
Physical
Three major physical body image constituents tend to emerge. These comprise perceived physical functioning, perceived body, and perceived hair and face (Jalali-Farahani et al., 2021). Among these components, teenagers refer to their preferred body, that is, the shape and size.
Cognitive
As a result of consistently seeing perfect body images on social media, teenagers may think negatively about their bodies. As a result, they feel dissatisfied with the way they look; thus, they may hate themselves. According to Jakatdar et al. (2006), white and heavier females tend to be highly susceptible to body image cognitive distortions compared to black and thinner females.
Psychosocial
Thapa & Subedi (2018) state that social media can cause low self-esteem and depression. Most of the posts display positive life aspects which are not always real. Teenagers do not have perfectly presented bodies, and comparing their actual bodies to flawless bodies makes their self-esteem low, which may contribute to depression
Human Development Theory
The developmental theory that will be utilized is the Erickson developmental theory. This is because it reveals teenagers’ crisis of perceiving their bodies negatively. As per the theory, when an individual completes every phase successfully, a healthy personality is developed and acquires rudimentary virtues. Typically, basic virtues are trait strengths that the ego could resolve in succeeding predicaments. When people fail to effectively complete one phase, this could cause a lessened capacity to finish additional stages and consequently develop unsuccessfully in the future (Powell, 2004).
Strategies
The strategies that an upcoming nurse must integrate into their practice are observing the physical elements of a person and assessing the psychosocial and lifestyle aspects. These help collect informative data about the patient’s health.
References
Burnette, C. B., Kwitowski, M. A., & Mazzeo, S. E. (2017). “I don’t need people to tell me I’m pretty on social media:” A qualitative study of social media and body image in early adolescent girls. Body Image, 23, 114-125.
Fardouly, J., & Vartanian, L. R. (2016). Social media and body image concerns: Current research and future directions. Current opinion in psychology, 9, 1-5.
Jalali-Farahani, S., Amiri, P., Zarani, F., & Azizi, F. (2021). The main physical components of body image from the perspectives of Iranian adolescents: a qualitative study. BMC Public Health, 21(1), 1-11.