what do you see when you scroll through
social media
for some they see a world telling them
that the way they look is wrong
and with coronavirus sending people
worldwide into lockdown in early 2020
this has only gotten worse half of the
world is now active on social
and it has changed how we judge the way
we look our body image
with social media having such a large
sway over a key part of our mental
health its lack of policing is shocking
and if it isn't fixed this mental health
issue may grow from crisis
to epidemic
as of 2021 more than half of the world's
population are active social media users
with 53 million users residing in the uk
alone social media is a great tool for
allowing us to feel more connected to
the ones we
love however this comes at a cost social
media can fuel body image anxiety as the
amount of people we compare our
appearance with
grows from the people we know in our
communities to pretty much everyone in
the virtual world
we end up creating this cycle for all of
us where we're constantly comparing and
constantly judging
every single person on it and when we're
comparing yes we're normally making
ourselves feel so much worse
when we're judging that's also not very
helpful for us as individuals
to be internalizing those thoughts to
judging someone's appearance based on
just a snapshot of
what they look like and where they're at
in that particular moment
with such a vast number of people using
social media the question is
can you trust what you see digitally
altering images so that skin looks
smoother and bodies look more ideal
is contributing to people having very
low self-esteem and leading them to
developing mental health conditions
such as body dysmorphic disorder where a
person worries about flaws in their
appearance
that other people don't even notice if
the
images that they're constantly seeing in
their feed are digitally altered images
people using lots of filters then they
can also get a skewed idea of what
people's
normal bodies actually look like in real
life there are lots of ideas of how we
can help people know what they're seeing
is reality and not digital trickery
in 2017 france introduced legislation
that any commercial image that has been
digitally altered must be labelled as an
edited photograph
we found that most young people are
aware the images they see online and in
the media have been digitally enhanced
but that doesn't stop them aspiring to
them anyway
so even when you know full well that
that picture is filtered and she does
not look like that in real life
or you know she's a celebrity she's
paying for personal trainers and
nutritionists
and whatever even when you know that
it's still very hard
to get your head around that because you
know that the reason they're doing that
and the reason they are changing their
body is because there is this
ideal body standard that people still
aspire to
the only way to stop these images from
being seen by people is for companies to
stop making them
luckily some are such as dove who told
us
we have not been distorting our images
for years and years on dove and that
includes everything
spots bruises marks flyaway hairs and
lighting we do not retouch anything
similarly the advertising standards
authority intervened in early 2021
to tell influences not to use misleading
beauty filters and ruled that filters
should not be applied to social media
adverts if they exaggerated the effect
of the products
unfortunately though this isn't enough
and company policies like that of doves
are still in the minority we need more
companies and advertisers to take this
approach and consider the effects their
edited images can have on consumers
mental health
when the platforms first emerged no one
expected social media sites like
facebook twitter and instagram to become
the online juggernauts that we know
today
that allow people to communicate their
thoughts and ideas across the globe
with this new far-reaching method of
connecting with other people came the
rise of the influencer
a person on social media who can affect
the decisions their audience makes due
to their knowledge
or relationship with a given topic it
has definitely changed the face of
instagram
and how it's used and it's gone from
just being sort of
a platform to share pictures with with
friends and family like people you know
in real life
to all of a sudden following the lives
of essentially celebrities
um that are only known because of their
instagram fame
they can be a force for good becoming a
refuge for healthy people of various
shapes and sizes who aren't given the
representation they deserve in
traditional media
well i'm a plus size model back in the
day you would never find someone like
myself on a website when you're looking
for clothes
but now the other people are able to
access that i think it's so important
because
it gives young girls a picture of
different types of bodies
different types of people that they feel
they can relate to
it takes away the pressure of us all
looking like
one particular person or one particular
body type
when it comes to social media it can be
a really positive thing and it could be
a tool that could be
really positive when we're thinking
about you know
body image but as with anything it can
also be negative as well
over the last year we've seen more and
more like expert nutritionists
popping up on places like instagram and
actually the only thing that's giving
them
any kind of credibility is that they
have millions and millions of followers
on instagram and they probably have a
blue tick
so then everyone takes what they're
saying is totally gospel
but actually a lot of the messaging
they're giving is extremely negative and
extremely
dangerous even hashtags that at first
glance seem harmless
can have a negative impact on someone's
opinion of their body image
fitspiration for example is a hashtag
associated with content that reinforces
the appearance ideals of thin and lean
for women
and lean and muscular for men and often
contains guilt-inducing messages
stigmatizes weight and body fat and
emphasizes
dieting and restrictive eating
particularly if you're looking at eating
disorder hashtags
you then get inundated with diet culture
and diet messaging
and for those people who maybe are in
recovery or maybe struggling with an
eating disorder
it just again fuels that idea that what
they're doing is okay that what they're
doing is normal
i think social media is horrible for
body image particularly
when i was growing up because it was
more just seeing
really ripped people really sort of
athletic guys the big six packs of big
arms a big chest and these sort of
accounts where it's preaching this
was so easy to access and it was so
[Music]
so self-promoted amongst those platforms
that
it's hard to avoid it we spoke to
representatives from social media
platforms who assured us that they do
have policies in place to police this
kind of content
and are running several campaigns on
their platforms to champion positive
body image
but users of the platform tell us that
their experiences don't line up with the
policies these companies have in place
i do not think social media companies do
enough to protect people from body image
arms
um particularly because these influences
keep keep coming through
and he might damage what they're causing
i think at the end of the day the social
media companies are giving these people
a platform and they know exactly what
they're doing
then they are responsible for the hound
that's course as a result of it and they
need to be doing more to protect people
social media is a direct source of
imagery and messaging for brands and
influencers to reach everyday people and
is arguably more interwoven into most
people's daily lives
especially during the pandemic than more
traditional media
yet companies running these platforms
are not putting in the appropriate
amount of protection and policing to
shield people from content that is
having a negative impact on their mental
health
[Music]
social media is out of control and
something needs to be done at a
government level to fix it
[Music]
here at the women inequalities committee
we've been researching the body image
crisis and the factors that are fueling
it
we've only scratched the surface of the
causes of this crisis with what we've
covered in this video
this research has been carried out as
part of our inquiry changing the perfect
picture
in which we cover even more about what
can be done to fix body image concerns
in modern society
for a more in-depth look at our research
you can read our report summary
available here
or if you'd like to read our full report
you can at committees.parliament
as part of our report we've made 17
recommendations to government
and we are eager to hear the
government's response which as a house
of commons committee
they are required to provide
you