Social Psychology

Social Psychology

Introduction

Recently, there has been an increase in the use of social media platforms such as Facebook in the presentation of people social life. As a result, people, especially the young have become inclined to comparing their images to that of others, and this has had an accrued psychological impact on both genders. Research indicates that there is a high level of dissatisfaction among individuals who are involved in this kind of comparison and there are adverse impacts on the self-esteem of most of the individual.  This trend is a physiological gap that requires to be addressed. The object of this paper is to explore how the body image on Facebook and other social media platforms are related to body dissatisfaction in either men or women.

Review of literature

Facebook use and adolescents’ emotional states of depression, anxiety, and stress.

Labrague (2014), in this article, explores the accrued disadvantages of Facebook on adolescents regarding issues such as anxiety, stress, and depression.  Despite the advantages that the social media platform offers such as friendship articulation and social capital. There are many personality problems that are related to the use of the media.

The author found that the major problem is mainly related to the self-esteem of the young people. There is some level of conformity among the adolescents on the progress of social media activities a factor that has created a form of social competition. Youths who feel to be inferior on Facebook might develop signs of depression, anxiety, and stress.

Facebook use and the association with self-esteem and depression

Jakobsdóttir (2016), reviews the association between Facebook use and self-esteem, stress, and depression of its regular users. The study is based on two variables which are the time spent on the platform and the frequency by which an individual changes the profile picture.

From the research, the author found that there was a significant association between stress, depression, and self-esteem with the number of times an individual changes the profile picture.  The lower the level of depression and stress were for the participant, the more they changed their profile picture. The research also found that the more time spent on Facebook, the higher the level of depression.

Attitudes and behaviors around receiving Likes on Facebook

Scissors, Burke, & Wengrovitz (2016), explore the behavior and attitude of people towards receiving Facebook likes.  Notably, likes and other kinds of social media affirmations act as social cues of social acceptance and might mean different things to different individuals.

From the research, the authors found that many people are concerned about the people who like their post rather than the number of likes. However, an individual with low self-esteem might count the number of likes and sometimes they might feel they are not enough.

Conclusion

Evidently, the use of Facebook and other social media platform affects the users especially the young people.  Some people tend to develop some sign of stress based on the manner and time they spend on social media.