Young Adult Perception and Self Esteem

 

PART A

PICO (O) question    

Will social media and body image change the perception and attitude on oneself?

 PICO (O) elements

Person/Population//Problem:
 Young adults

Intervention/Interest:
Social Media

Comparison/Control:
Nil

Outcome:
Perception

Other:
Body image

 

Identify main and alternate search terms

Population

 

 

 

Intervention

 

 

Comparison

(not commonly used in actual database search strategy)

 

Outcome

(not commonly used in actual database search strategy)

 

Other

 

Main search term:
Main search term:
Main search term:
Main search term:
Main search term:

Young adult

 

Social Media

Nil
Perception

Body image

Alternative search terms:
Alternative search terms:
Alternative search terms:
Alternative search terms:
Alternative search terms:

Adult

 

 

 

 

Internet

Phone

Laptop

 

View point

Approach

Opinion

Concept

 

 

Key terms:

1
 Adult

2

Young Adult

3
1 OR 2

4
Social Media

5
Internet

6
Phone

7
Laptop

8
4 OR 5 OR 6 OR 7

9
Perception

10
View point

11
Approach

12
Opinion

13
Concept

14
9 OR 10 OR 11 OR 12 OR 13

15
Body image

16
15

17
3  AND 8 AND 14 AND 16

Limits applied to 17

 

OR = combines search terms for the same topic; expands the search to get as many potential papers as possible

 

 

 

PART B: Essay

Introduction

Young adults between the age of 18 and 25 spend majority of their times in the social media and other technological aspects. Most of these people are at their adolescent stage and they strive to get independence and make personal decisions, while acquiring personal identities (Yi Lin et al, 2016). They also want to get the attention or get a fit ad gain into their peer groups. They are in the highest capacity of understanding their health and biological developments and actively participate in attending to issues relating to their health and medications. This is the most productive stage in the development of human life as well as the fiscal development of a country. The social media however is depriving these young adults of their societal role of community and individual development as this aspect consumes most of their time and mind. This is attributed to the fact that young adults are the most acquainted group of the population in matters regarding the newest internet communication technologies. This is boosted by the accessibility and the widespread adoption of wireless networks and mobile internet access. This study explores the extent to which social media and other internet tools change the perception of the young people with regard to their bodies and the negative consequences on their self esteem.

The frequency at which the young adults discuss their health issues provides a better suggestion of a better way of discussing and solving the health issues that relate to them. A positive relationship has been found to exist between the individual depression and the time an individual can spent on the internet. This implies that depression could be common problem amid the young adults that mostly spent their time online. Some scholars’ research suggest that majority of the secondary school students ultimately require health guidance in addition to mental health support. However, utilizing the social media distance them from their health practitioners and they will end up utilizing the wrong information and mental health directions from the fellow peers they share the platform with.

Some studies suggest that the use of social media among young adults could lower the extent of depression attributed to the increased social support, social capital and the satisfaction of life (Topper et al., 2017). Most however contrast the stipulation and suggest rapid use of the platform is associated with degradation of the human well-being, the real life satisfaction and the support from the social societal settings. These studies define a strong correlation between the social media use and the extent of human depression, showing a direct linear relationship between the social media use the negative human perception on the mental health and body physic together with the mood deregulation. Most research results show increased depression between the college and secondary school students, though majority utilize cross sectional data which does not provide a clear directionality of the argument.

Consequently, individuals could be using the social media following continual rumination and guilt which surrounds this utility (McVey et al., 2016). This drives them due to low self-esteem and negative self-belief. They may the accessible social media since it facilitates interactions in a more controlled setting rather engaging them in a one-on-one interaction. They will find this as a remedy to their fundamental depression and anhedonia.

Other studies have linked social media with a decline in the social well-being, subjective mood and life satisfaction (Mahmoud et al, 2015). The rising consumption of passive utility rather than active communications in the social media settings is caused by the decreasing bonding, over passing the social center and escalating loneliness. This is also contributed by the subjection to more ideal illustration form other young adults who bring an impression that they are leading a more successful life. This generates a feeling of envy and the thought that one is not living a life to the standards that others are living. They feel that their peers are successful and they have been left behind. This generates a sense of inferiority and gradually developing depression, which ends up to time wastage on activities that are meaningless and less productive with regard to personal development. In the recent times, the internet addiction has been recognized by the medical practitioners as a psychiatric condition that requires immediate attention (Weinstein et al., 2015). This has been triggered by the increasing number of young adults who spent most of their time on the internet, especially the social media platforms. The medical experts associate the psychiatric condition as being closely associated with depression (Moreau et al., 2015).

During the long hours interactions with peers in the social media, young adults, especially females, share comments and messages that make them inferior since girls tend to socialize more than boys, drawing themselves into comparisons with others. Many adolescents spent a lot of their time in order to perfect their profiles to evade scrutiny from the peers as they strive to win their acceptance (Perin, 2015). They consequentially produce different persons different from whom they really are, drawing them further from understanding themselves. According to (Kvalem et al., 2014), self esteem comes from consolidating who you are, and the more one tries to spend them to generate a different identity from their own self in order to win the recognition of the peers, the harder your feelings will be with regard to self acceptance and feeling good about oneself.

Young adult females overusing the internet tend to suffer more from the low self-esteem and negative body image. For instance, according to Anderson et al. (2017), 40.1% of teenage girls in Australia between the age of 16 and 18 are not satisfied with their bodies. Most of them react to the images that they find on the social media, especially face book. They look at the images of other young girls and compare themselves with them, thus resulting to the negative feelings that their bodies are not good enough. This deprives them of their health routine, abandoning the regular body exercise as well as increased anxiety. The shame and negative perception on the individual body image to a higher extent affect girls who regularly use the internet and research indicates that most of them are subject to the low self esteem and higher degree of shame (Boulianne, 2015). Researchers have also established that there is a direct relationship between the frequency of social media use and the extent to which young girls feel ashamed of themselves.

Other factors that result in the negative perception on the body image and low self esteem is the type of products that are advertised in the social media platforms. Most of these products, for instance, cosmetics, how to lose weight and dating products, according to (Vaterlaus et al., 2015), are mostly meant to suit older women. However, the advertisements have been widely done without these bounds and this gives young ladies access to them. Upon viewing the products, they start doubting themselves thus resulting to low self esteem.

Young adults who respond positively to social media spent shorter times in the sites, checking their profiles, acknowledging their strengths rather than weaknesses. On the contrary, those responding negatively spend a lot of their time on the platform. This will give them that idea of drawing comparisons with others, subsequently generating the feelings of inferiority to the profiles, likes or pictures they observe (Yonker et al., 2015).

Conclusion

The study should be of concern to the medical practitioners as it may be critical for them to evaluate the use of the social media to identify how the young adults are using it and find ways of solving different negative perceptions with regard to their health and body development. The practitioners as well need to interact with them in the platform, since social media is the most common interaction place, note the challenges and find out an important balance to utilize in order to develop a lasting remedy from these problems. Social media also forms an important arena for health experts to analyze depression while developing important educational messages regarding the condition, which could be important in sensitizing on the maladaptive system and how it relates with depression. It is critical noting the presence of diversified interactions within the social media, for instance, the overall time spent and the prevalence of visiting the social media sites. However, most of the past researches focus on analyzing a specific interaction platform, rather than exploring the overall social media platforms. It is important analyzing the interaction between multiple platforms as this will provide finer results while improving the understanding on various social media interactions. It is also prudent assessing the relationship between these various social media sites and depression.

 

 

 

References

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