Online vs Reality: You Edition

I’ve seen two different articles in the past couple of days both about social media and body image. While I could take this as a sign to pay a little extra attention to my own mental and/or physical health, these posts weren’t sponsored posts targeting me to lose weight or buy a special concealer. They were from accounts I choose to follow for the information they share, and these ones were calling attention to how social media and technology have impacted self-image in ways deeper than we may initially realize.

The first post was from Dove. It was calling attention to how filters distort self-image and how they can negatively affect children - especially young girls. Starting at age 5, young girls start to become aware of their weight and diet culture. Read that again - age 5. That’s kindergarten! There are so many more important developmental milestones 5-year-olds should be reaching. Becoming self-conscious about their appearance isn’t one of them.

The other post was from Wired drawing attention to “Zoom Dysmorphia.” This phenomenon is basically the fact that since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been spending more time on video calls (#remoteworking) where they have to look at their own faces from weird, up-close camera angles, directly next to someone else’s face. This is causing more people to have a negative self-image to the extent they are seeking doctors’ appointments to change how they look.

How do these two posts relate? That’s where I started to draw random connections and think about other projects I’ve worked on. My brain jumped to thinking about how Zoom Dysmorphia probably doesn’t only apply to adults who have been taking more video calls for work. What about all the kids who have been in virtual classes during the pandemic. Not only is virtual learning harder (that’s an entirely different rabbit hole), but it also forces kids to contend with the impacts of technology. Did kids attending virtual kindergarten start to question the way they looked even more because they were staring at their own faces all day? And what about the fact that they were faces without those same filters they are used to seeing other places on the internet (i.e. Instagram, Snapchat, etc.)? Was virtual schooling actually a good thing since those students saw more real, unfiltered, yet still digital, faces? Was it negative because they could spend all day directly comparing their own looks to those of their classmates? I guess, for now, only time will tell.

But, while we wait, we can do things to help ourselves and those around us feel more confident in our own skin. For some platforms, we can hide the small video of ourselves. We can remind ourselves and others that what we see in Zoom is only a small portion of us - and a distorted one at that. We can also be kinder on ourselves and say more of those positive things out loud. And, when it comes to younger kids, we can build them up. Think about compliments that are about things they do or enjoy, rather than how they look (for all kids, not just girls). For example, talk about the art project they completed, or the game they played, or the story they are telling instead of saying how nice they look or how big they’ve gotten since the last time you saw them. We can set good examples by not nit-picking every little thing that makes us unique or different from the cultural norm. And, we can make an effort to not be so focused on screens - especially when in the company of others. Focus on the quality time with others instead of hiding in screens or comparing yourself to them.