How can social media bring down young adults’ self-esteem and how can this be improved?

I asked people what they see when they look in the mirror.

99% of responses were negative;

“Fat.”

“Ugly.”

“My flaws.”

“Something I’m seriously unhappy with.”

“How fat my arms are.”

“Someone who could be happy if their whole face was replaced with someone else’s.”

“My normal self, not the Instagram version.”

It’s easy to wonder, why do so many people feel this way? Instantly when you ask yourself this question, social media might be one of the factors that come to mind. Open Instagram and you might be met with a woman who has beautiful blond hair in a size eight bikini, enjoying a holiday in the Bahamas, sipping on a strawberry Martini. When people see posts like this, it can be difficult for some not to compare themselves.

When you open TikTok, you might see a video of a young man singing, hopeful that his new single will be downloaded by hundreds of people. However, when you open the comment section, you may find people tearing him apart, calling his music ‘cringe’ and ‘boring.’ The process of making an account and leaving derogatory comments to anyone online is so easy to do.

I’ve set out to find out more about how social media can harm young adults’ self-esteem, and how these self-esteem issues can be prevented.

Part 1

Why do we compare ourselves to others online?

“In 2017, only a few months after starting my media group, I actually went through a massive depression myself and some of that was stemmed from the negative side of social media.”

Ted Lawlor, 24 from London is the UK’s advocate for young business minds where he helps to inform and inspire young people. He does this particularly in the world of business by helping people build businesses and focuses on their mind-set. Although Ted now has a successful career, he suffered with anxiety and depression growing up, which has inspired him to go on and help young people.

“You’d assume that as a young white guy from London I’d have plenty of people to relate to and that represent me, but my story is slightly different in the fact that I come from a poor background. I was part of a working-class family with a single parent and a few other things were going on in my life. So, I never had somebody that I looked at and thought wow they’ve been exactly what I’ve been through, so I felt that lack of representation impacted me as well, and that left me a bit lost.”

When he was a university student, he would compare himself to famous entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson when on the internet. He looked up to them, but found that a negative comparison would start to kick in. Very quickly, he started doubting himself which led to struggles surrounding his mental health. He noticed that successful people on social media would leave out big parts of their story, which led him to believe that he’d never able to get to where they were.

As he only had university two days a week, he described spending most of the time in his room online. “Being on social media all day, every day for the rest of the week, really impacted me as I didn’t have any sort of direct contact from real life people.” He didn’t have much engagement on his social media back then and found people didn’t engage with what he was posting, leaving him “feeling really alone.”

Ted eventually started to connect with other people interested in business which he says he wouldn’t have been able to do without social media. Also on social media, he was able to find opportunities to build his career, earn money and make friends also through networking. “In a weird way I sort of used social media to bounce back, even though it was the thing that made me fall into a trap in the first place,” he said.

His mental health started to improve as he spent a lot of time meditating, talking to family and building his passions. “I got a grasp of what was real and what wasn’t. I’m not sure how I did this, but getting an understanding, I think from people telling me perhaps that what you see on social media isn’t always real helped.”

He now owns the media company If only they knew where the main output is a podcast for young people who are interested in business. Ted calls this his ‘passion project.’ He also worked with Robert Hisee, the UK’s number one unconscious mind therapist who’s worked on the minds of celebrities all over the country. Together, they crafted the manifestation journal which helps people develop their mental health and manifest desires.

Ted filming with ITV news to talk about how young people are transitioning into the business world.

Ted on London Live TV with his business partner talking about mindset and manifestation.

Ted talking to entrepreneurs.

Chris Fullwood

Ted decided to do some research into why social media had affected him. He gave me some psychological theories and I spoke to Cyber Psychologist Dr Chris Fullwood, a lecturer at the University of Gloucestershire who’s been in the field for 20 years for more information. He’s published over 50 publications and is an expert in how technology and the online world affects people psychologically.

This is where people compare who they want to be to what other people are doing, who they are and what they look like. This is called the ideal self – the self you want to aim towards.

“If for example your ideal self feels like it’s too far away and distant or not achievable, that can create a sense of hopelessness or desperation because you don’t feel like you can become the person that you want to become,” Chris said.

This is the theory that if someone spends a lot of time online, they may have a lack of in person interactions which could restrict their social development.

“One of the potential problems is if you have an individual that feels as though they can only really be themselves online, it can potentially become addictive. If I feel that the only place, I can be myself is online then I might want to spend as much time there as possible,” Chris said. He went on to say that we don’t yet know the long-term effects of spending lots of time online.

Everyone has a need or desire to decide how they’re doing or work out what their place is. It’s natural to compare yourself to others in order to work this out. There’re three types of comparison.

Upward comparison: When you have this comparison, you perceive someone as higher or doing better than you. Comparing yourself to this person can lead to different types of emotional responses. For some people, they might become motivated to do better, for other people, they might think that they can’t achieve what that person has. In terms of social media, upwards comparison is the one that people feel when they see someone’s post having more likes than theirs, or someone living what looks to be a more exciting lifestyle.

Sideways comparison: This is where you feel like you’re on the same level as whoever you’re comparing yourself to. This might be that you have a similar income or similar fashion style.

Downwards social comparison: This is when you’re comparing yourself to someone but believe you’re doing better. This is the situation which people tend to prefer as it suggests they’re doing well. On social media, someone feeling this comparison might have lots of followers and continue to post exciting content to keep people engaged.

“People react to these situations in different ways, there’s no cookie cutter approach to understand how people react to social comparisons,” Chris said.

A survey was done with children aged 10 to 15 about their time spent online which was collected just before the pandemic. The ONS published a report about the survey, finding that 89% of children aged 10 to 15 years said they went online every day. Just over 50% reported they used social media currently. With children spending so much time online at a potentially vulnerable age, it raises questions about how this may or may not affect their self-esteem going into their adult years.

@Epicantus from Unsplash

Tommy Hatto knows all too well about how social media can affect people at a vulnerable time. Aged 27 from Swindon he’s been in the entertainment industry for over 10 years where he’s done modelling and acting. He’s modelled for Calvin Klein and GQ and even featured in the Hollywood movie Thor: The dark world, released in 2013. Tommy soon found that his career wasn’t all glam and sparkles though, as he noticed he was constantly comparing himself to other people on social media.

He’d always had body issues where he’d compare himself to other people, and moving into the entertainment sector amplified this as his income was based on how he looked. “When the algorithm fires all these similar pages to you, it can be very overwhelming and very isolating in a way. That’s what I found, that I was always constantly comparing myself to people on social media.” He started modelling when he was in his late teens and early 20’s and this was when his self-esteem issues were most prevalent, as he described that he was still finding out who he was.

It soon came to Tommy’s attention that although his self-esteem issues were growing by looking at other people’s social media, people were also looking at his account and feeling the same way. “Although people wanted to look like me, there were 50 other people that I wanted to look like, and I didn’t realise that the content I was putting out was triggering for some people and also causing other people’s self-esteem issues. It was like this vicious cycle,” he said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow in terms of all those years I was damaging other people’s mental health by what I was putting out unconsciously, I never did it intentionally.”

Tommy now dedicates a lot of his time talking to young people about self-esteem issues and in particular men, as he says men often don’t talk about their insecurities and weaknesses. He goes into businesses and schools, where he explains his story and struggles in order to reach people going through similar hurdles. “It’s never about trying to get people or men to open up, it’s never about saying you need to talk about your feelings, it’s just about being a voice that they can connect to and resonate with.”

He's teamed with Nicole Ponsford at the Global Quality Collective (a collection of diversity and inclusion experts) where they did an anonymous survey about why people face self-esteem issues and what pressures they feel. They had over 1,000 responses from people all over the world from around 60 countries in just a couple of months. The results are yet to be published, but he did say, “social media was the top driving factor of why people felt they had a negative body image, because of the content they see.”

Tommy’s work won him the Mental Health Blog Award for social media in 2022. “The stuff that I was putting out was meaningful to people and I was picked up by the industry, I guess this was just a real achievement in itself.” He’s had challenging interviews and conversations with journalists and people who have questioned how he can be an advocate for low body image self-esteem with the job that he does. Tommy’s answer is, “Just because you look a certain way doesn’t mean that you have to feel a certain way about yourself. I want to bring people together to say actually, this is a universal issue, this is something that we all go through, so what can we do collectively to help?”

Part 2

How can receiving hate online impact a person?

In the social media world, lies a darker side. According to The Royal Society for Public Health, for every ten young people, a whopping seven have experienced cyberbullying. I’ve created a short film to depict the effects of being cyberbullied and receiving hate online.

The amount of reported illegal online hate in the UK is actually very low, so low that there’s very little data available. The Alan Turing Institute reported in 2019 that between 2016 and 2017 there were 1,171 confirmed illegal online hate crimes reported in the UK and between 2017 and 2018 there were 1,784 confirmed illegal UK reports. But they used their survey data and analysis from the Oxford Internet Survey to find that between 30-40% of people in the UK have experienced online abuse. This is a huge amount compared to crimes which have been reported and defined as ‘illegal.’

While there is no clear definition for online hate written in the law, True Vision (a platform where you can report hate crimes) say that hate material is only recorded by police as a ‘hate crime’ when a crime is seen in the eyes of the law as committed with a hateful motivation. This might be defined as race, religion or sexual orientation. It’s especially difficult to prosecute a person when they live in a different country or can’t be tracked. These two factors make it more difficult to monitor hate online and define abuse as illegal.

Although it’s difficult to get people prosecuted, there are ways to get hateful material removed. True Vision recommend reporting it to the police, or reporting it to the website administrator itself. The majority of websites have ‘acceptable use policies’ which set out rules about what cannot be put on their site. One of these rules is usually that they don’t allow hurtful comments, videos, and photos. Social media platforms also have easy ways to report comments and block people.

You can report online hate, or any hate crime on True Visions site here. Stop Hate UK also have 24-hour reporting services where people can access support and information.

@a_d_s_w from Unsplash

I spoke to Josh and Elizabeth, who I’ve given pseudonyms for anonymity, who know personally about the effects of receiving hate online.

Elizabeth, 21 from London received cruel anonymous texts when she was aged 14 and 15. Thankfully, she doesn’t get them anymore, but feels as though it’s affected her to this day. “I had no clue who it was, I still don’t,” she said. She described that the messages would be along the lines of ‘your boyfriend’s only with you for whatever reason.’ ‘You’re a bitch, no one likes you.’ ‘All of your friends hate you.’ She didn’t want to delete social media because it was her way of talking to her friends and little brother, so it became a difficult situation.

She’s also struggled with her body image, and continues to, which she believes is because of social media. “Social media plays such a big role and takes so many hours of the day,” she said. To help herself, she spends less time on social media and limits her screen time by turning off notifications from time to time.

Josh, 21 from Wales, struggled with eating, which made it difficult for him to put weight on as well as struggling with his mental health. It was during this time that he received several hate comments on his photos which he said made his situation worse.

“You won’t be able to fight for yourself when you’re older.” “You can’t do this, you can’t do that.” Just hearing those words as a kid makes you think to yourself, what have I done to put myself in this position?” He said. This led Josh to have suicidal thoughts and self-harm. “I would just try and feel the pain because I was getting picked on that much.” Eventually, the hate and mental health problems got too much. One day, Josh went outside and found a big log that he started hitting his hands with. They went purple and he was bruised badly. “I’m lucky I didn’t lose my hands because they were so purple, I couldn’t tell if they were my hands or not,” he said.

Josh is doing a lot better now and his mental health has improved, but sometimes he gets glimpses of the past and the hate he received. It’s been difficult to recover from everything fully. His word of advice is, “block all the haters out, don’t listen to what they say, you know you better than anyone and if you block the haters out, you’re going to live your best life better than if you’re thinking about all the negative people.”

Part 3 How can we make this better?

Once we have a negative perception of ourselves, putting it behind can be a difficult thing to master. The NHS website suggests a good way of improving self-esteem is by challenging the negative thoughts you have about yourself and practicing self-love. The Oxford Dictionary definition for self-love is ‘the feeling that your own happiness and wishes are important.’

The NHS suggest writing down bad thoughts such as ‘I am not smart enough’ or ‘I have no friends.’ Then write evidence that these thoughts are wrong such as ‘I passed that exam last week’ or ‘I hung out with my friends yesterday.’ They suggest also keeping a list of positive things you would say about yourself, and compliments other people say to you. Look at this list when you’re feeling less confident, and this should eventually create a more positive mind set surrounding self-love.

Katie Queue is a life coach and spiritual guide. She’s also a mentor with the Princess Diana Award which empowers young people to make positive changes in the world as well as building personal skills within the career sector. In addition to this, she also works for corporate where she head hunts for companies on a global scale, helping people get jobs. With all of Katie’s experiences helping people achieve their dreams, she’s worked with several young people, and coached them to understand themselves better.

Growing up, she felt like nobody was there for her, and felt as if she didn’t fit in. Eventually, she started putting value on who she was and loving herself. “The minute I gave myself value, I became an extraordinary human being.” She described her favourite part of the job is showing people that others’ opinions about them don’t matter. She’s passionate about this and has also seen how social media can affect people’s self-esteem and has some great advice about how people can avoid this.

I asked people to tell me some of the social media related problems they were facing and asked Katie to put her agony aunt skills to work.

Katie's advice...

“How do you steer yourself away from feeling like the likes you get on your photos determine you as a person and whether you’re worthy.” Female, 20.

“Please know that social media is fake. I have seen people take a picture of their watch and I ask them; how much was that Rolex? And it’s fake. It cost them £300. The images are fake, they’re edited. Someone might not even see your picture, they might be busy, they might have missed it. That doesn’t mean you’re not in their thought process. As long as you like yourself, you’re going to outgrow people. You’re going to look back and think why did I even care.”

How can I stop caring about what people say about me online? Male, 20.

“Look at who’s saying it. Most people online giving hate are hateful individuals who are sad with nothing to do. If I said to you, I’m going to give you a compliment, there’s about five people in this room who would you like a compliment from? You’re not going to say the sad individual who’s on the internet all day, are you? So, see people for who they really are, they’re abusing anyone online.

How can I learn not to care what other people are doing and comparing myself to them?” Female, 21.

“Easy, you’ve got to know your value! What I want you to do is, I want you to sit down every day and write compliments about yourself. Stop looking at what everyone else is doing on their social media and sit there and start saying, I love my taste in music! I love my style! When that energy starts to build up, you become untouchable. Then you’ll start looking at other people and think, I don’t even know why I was bothered.”

Katie had one more piece of advice which was chuck it in the fuck it bucket! – basically meaning, stop caring.

“When you’re 80 years old and you’re sat in your rocking chair, are you going to remember these people? I’ll probably forget if I’ve had breakfast or not, so why keep them in your energy field, they’re disposable. Only put value on yourself, not anybody else.”

I spoke to Jo Parkin, a counsellor at the University of Gloucestershire, to find out how else people can overcome self-esteem issues. She identified that “social media encourages us to show the most shiny sides of ourselves.” Also saying that there’s a toxic side to social media and “people don’t always use it with the care it needs.” Jo is trained in Mindfulness Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and knows all about how mindfulness and CBT can help raise self-esteem.

Jo with some international students

Jo with some international students

Mindfulness - a mental state achieved by concentrating on the present moment, while calmly accepting the feelings and thoughts that come to you, used as a technique to help you relax. (Oxford English dictionary)

Mindfulness can include methods such as mediation, going on walks and practicing self-love. In her sessions, Jo encourages people to use apps such as Headspace which have guided meditation sessions on them. She also encourages people to get outside and go walking. If you’re not a big walker, the NHS suggest walking with friends or listening to music or a podcast to ease you into it.

CBT - a type of psychotherapy in which you are encouraged to change negative ways of thinking about yourself and the world in order to change behaviour patterns or treat conditions such as depression. (Oxford English dictionary)

This can include exposing yourself slowly to something which scares you, or taking small steps which slowly but surely help you face your problem. Jo said that part of this in terms of self-esteem is “becoming aware that most of us have a little critical voice inside our heads that’s constantly commentating on everything we do. And certainly, when we’re under stress or under pressure that voice tends to take on a harsh aspect to it.” CBT would help someone to question that voice and challenge the negative thoughts until those bad ones are replaced with more positive ones.

Social media is a never-ending portal of photos and comments where you can find yourself scrolling for hours. I asked everyone I spoke to if they thought social media was a good place or a bad place. Nobody said it was the most awful place ever because social media isn’t all bad. When used in the right way, it can be a place where you can meet people, build businesses, and find some great content.

Over the years, social media has added features to help improve mental health issues that might be caused from being online such as the ability to turn off comments on posts. Recently, a new and important rule came into place that a social media advertisement must state that it’s an advertisement. This contributes as a small barrier to what’s real on social media and what isn’t.

I asked people what they like about themselves when they look in the mirror.

“My outfit.”

“My tattoos.”

“My lips.”

“My eyes.”

“I love my hair and my eyes.”

“I enjoy when I’ve had a nice haircut.”

“I have always liked my eyes. They’re green and blue with bits of other colours too.”

There are always good things to see😊!

If your self-esteem has been beaten down by social media, they’re things you can do to help yourself. You’re far from alone. If you relate to anything in this article and need guidance, you can get help here…

For urgent help: Samaritans: call 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org for a reply within 24 hours.

Psychological therapy: NHS Let’s Talk Service Let's Talk Service > Glos Health & Care NHS Foundation Trust (ghc.nhs.uk)

Reporting hate: True Vision Report a hate crime - True Vision (report-it.org.uk)