In the past magazines have been criticised for not representing reality, presenting perfect people living perfect lives and presenting us with impossible role models. Nowadays, it is digital technologies that have taken over with distorted imagery, so-called aspirational videos, questionable lifestyle advice under the guise of presenting our best selves to our friends and to the world in general. ‘As digital natives, social media and digital technologies have become an integral aspect of the culture, education and lived experience of young people today’ (Allen, Ryan, Gray, McInerney, & Waters, 2014 in State of Play (2018)). The temptation to use technology such as filters to make a photo look better or more acceptable is significant and this manipulation of reality only serves to perpetuate the myth that ‘you are not enough, just as you are.’
Dr. Ali Jazayeri, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology states ‘The world that we see on Facebook and other social media sites is not a true and real world. It’s a creation of people’ (2023). If a child is happy they create a post that shows the world that they are a success but conversely, when they are feeling down, they see the shiny, bright posts of others and wonder why they aren’t happy as well. They buy into the reality of the virtual world, compare themselves to others and engage in negative self-talk which, in turn, eats into their real world situations.
In the minds of young people, the online persona they create is vital to their social success with their peers. Decisions made online determine friendships, form the basis of their opinions and beliefs and while this can be positive, these decisions can also be in conflict with their actual reality. Donna Wick, founder of Mind-to-Mind Parenting, points to the gap between the way young people present themselves online and the reality of who they truly are. ‘If you practice being a false self, eight hours a day, it gets harder to accept the less-than-perfect being you really are’ says Dr. Wick (in Jacobson 2022).
Sherry Thomas, also from Chicago School of Professional Psychology states ‘What concerns Dr. Jazayeri most, from a psychologist’s perspective, is the danger of slipping too far into a virtual world and losing a sense of real life, real self, and real priorities’ and this, in turn, creates the potential to distort an individual’s sense of self and sense of other people (2016). It is likely that many young people have created identities that are far from truthful out of a need to be accepted by their peers. Additionally, Jazayeri is concerned that this ‘overreliance on this virtual world…is undermining all the progress human beings have made in addressing real-life problems.’ The skills we work so hard to build in young people such as resilience, respectfulness and kindness are being undermined and in some cases, eroded, by the behaviour of others online.
Away from school, kids and young people seek ownership of their online profiles and actively craft their identity, affiliations, and reputation to align with how they wish to be perceived. They feel strongly motivated, often because of peer pressure, to update their profiles regularly ‘despite being aware of the potential hazardous consequences linked to social comparison, jealousy and conflict’ (Osatuyi, Passerini, Ravarini, & Grandhi (2018) in State of Play 2018)). This, however, can put them at risk for ‘when people update their social media profiles, they are producing online repositories of accessible self-representations’ (De Wolf, Willaert, & Pierson (2014) in State of Play (2018)).