by Franki Jones

We are often inspired by social media and the influencers that come with it, whether the topic is about new clothing or shoes that have come out, or anything involving a celebrity. This is where the majority of us get our information from.

 One thing that I find to be very overlooked when it comes to emphasizing and piquing the young adults’ interest is anything involving body shaming and body positivity.

I find this to be very interesting and it’s one of the problems with this generation. Many men and women often feel pressured to measure up and match the strict and unrealistic social and cultural beauty ideals. I believe that this is because it’s not hard to catch the attention of the new adults and even older people that may acquire social media. 

Everyone is beautiful and we need to learn to love ourselves for who we are and who we were made to be. We are all here for reasons that nobody else in this world will understand unless we make it known.

Social media is the place where we see others that we believe look better than us or that may have a better body than us. It’s truly very sad that this is a common problem and society makes us feel badly for speaking up about it. They make us feel like loving ourselves for who we are and who we were made to be is one of the worst things to be done, and it’s truly not.

Body shaming is something that I never really understood. “Nobody is better than any other, so why do they treat people that way?”, is a question that I asked myself growing up.

 Getting into my teen years, I started to see how others were treated because of how different they were from other people’s standards. It was wrong for a girl to be taller than 5’3, wrong for a boy to be shorter than 6’0. The difference in reactions that were given when someone that was bigger wore a skirt compared to someone who may be slimmer wore it conflicted me.

 Why did it have to be this way?

Many of us do not realize that some of the people that we look up to and who we want so badly to be like or look like are some of the same that look right back at us, wishing that they had what we have.

We are beautiful and we need to learn to love ourselves for who we are and who we were made to be. We are all here for reasons that nobody else in this world will understand unless we make it known.

To read an objective story on the impact of social media on teens, click on the link below:

Social media can have negative effects on teens