TW: brief mention of bullying, body shaming, and similar topics.
I created my first Instagram profile when I was in eighth grade. Needless to say, we’ve come a long way from iPad mirror selfies and ¼ face selfies. My relationship with social media started off fairly pure. I was mainly using apps to connect with friends and post my colored skinny jean fit pics. As the years went on and I entered high school, this relationship became more and more toxic.
The introduction of anonymous submission platforms like Askfm led to me experiencing body-shaming and harassment for the first time in my young adult life. I remember first creating my profile and linking it in my Instagram bio. I was expecting people to ask about my boyfriend or my favorite classes, but instead, I was bombarded with dozens of questions like, “why would *insert boyfriend’s name* be with someone so ugly?” or “when are you going to lose weight?” and other ones that were honestly too vulgar and explicit to repeat.
Looking back, I should have probably just deleted the account and moved on. Instead, I became obsessive with responding to these comments and trying to appear unbothered and unphased by these nasty remarks.
Then came the infamous “Like for a TBH/Rate” phase. Did I just uncover a subconscious memory for you? I recently came across some of my old posts and was instantly flooded with memories of anxiously waiting as people commented their responses on my posts. “What if they give me a low number?” “What if they don’t have much to say about me…what does that mean?” “Why are they taking so long to comment?”
I remember the sigh of relief after seeing that they rated me an 8.5 or 9, or hit me with an “Idk you, but you seem cool” or “we should talk more.” It’s so hard to think back on how these cringe-worthy, thoughtless comments would define my mood and confidence for the rest of that day, month, and next few years.
I slowly began to post more selectively. I would choose pictures where I looked the “skinniest” or ones where I was smiling enough that I looked happy but not happy enough to show my “imperfect” smile. I became that friend who needed to look at photos dozens of times and add multiple filters before giving the stamp of approval to post. I would post a picture and delete it the next week because I sat for too long over-analyzing my pose or my skin in that specific lighting.
When this shift was happening, I noticed that I was focusing more on how I looked on social media and how others looked. Whether it was pictures of friends or people I knew from my town or celebrities and influencers I followed, I eventually fell so deep down the self-comparison rabbit hole that I could not find my way out. I spent many nights crying myself to sleep because I didn’t have the body of my favorite Instagram model or skin that was as clear as that one girl in my math class.
There’s a significant gap in this (short) piece that includes other apps like Twitter, Snapchat, and Phhhoto, but if I included my history with all of these, I would end up with a 300-page long essay.
Let’s skip ahead quite a few years to the last year, 2020. I downloaded Tik Tok for the first time and immediately saw how fast the algorithm worked, both in my favor and not. I became painfully aware of the people I was following and how I was using social media (spoiler alert: still in a toxic way!) when I witnessed an FYP filled with body-checking, dieting advice, and celebrity gossip accounts. This was really a wake-up call for me, and I started going through my “following” list and unfollowing people and accounts that I knew I was seeking out for the wrong reasons.
As I discussed in a previous article, I also started a skincare blog last summer out of a quarantine creative funk. While this page started as something to do in my basement’s socially-isolated boredom, it quickly became an essential part in healing my toxic relationship with social media. Long story short, I have had acne since I was fourteen and have dealt with many self-confidence issues as a result. I’d go through periods of time when I felt “good” about the state of my skin, followed by periods where I couldn’t take selfies or see my friends until it cleared up.
When I first started posting on my z.kincare page, I mainly focused on product reviews and cute texture shots. I stumbled upon a few accounts early on during this time that were completely dedicated to this (amazing!) thing called skin positivity, and I was sucked in immediately.
People with all different skin types were open and honest about their skin journeys, dedicated to showing “real” skin on social media and promoting so much love and positivity in their content. I began interacting with more skin-positive posts and creators, eventually building up the confidence to start posting things like this myself.
I still have days where I feel myself getting sucked into the negativity of Tik Tok trends or the drama on Instagram, but I’ve begun to form a supportive community of genuine, uplifting people, which has changed my relationship with social media for the better. This mindset carried over into all my other social media accounts and platforms and has truly been a life-changer for my self-confidence and self-perception.
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Now, I almost exclusively follow people that promote skin-positivity, body-positivity, and overall positive messages through their content. It seems like a simple change to make, but it took me years to realize that what I was seeing on my feeds was damaging my mental health, both online and offline.
I strongly encourage you to evaluate your relationship with social media and see if you’re in need of a change so you don’t realize it when you’re years into a destructive daily routine of scrolling and comparing. I’m still not perfect, and I catch myself slipping sometimes, but I am proud of how I’ve grown overall. Eighth grade me scrolling nervously through Askfm responses would be proud :)