Self Destructing Medi The Impressionable Teenage Female...

Self-Destructing Media For the impressionable teenage female, body image has unfortunately become a complex and troubled concept in today’s society. Adolescent girls have been experiencing body image disturbances due to the self-evaluation of appearance conflicting with mental and physical health. Excessive amounts of exposure to social media has been proven to profoundly interfere with a female’s confidence—ultimately resulting in a multitude of body image dissatisfactions. When teenagers are exposed to magazines and social media networks that promote the ideal body, this, more often than not, leads to depression, lowered self-esteem, or even eating disorders. If the media were to include and beautify more of the so-called normal or average women, it is believed that females would no longer feel pressured to look a certain way in order to be deemed beautiful. Adolescence marks a time of rapid and intense emotional and physical changes. There is a tremendous amou nt of pressure placed on the value of peer acceptance during adolescence, making young girls feel like they need to look like the women that appear in magazines, social medias, and advertisements. During this developmental phase, youths begin to focus more on their physical appearance, which can conflict with their mental health and well-being. A report by the British Medical Association’s Board of Science and Education stated that most actresses and models have ten to fifteen percent body fat, whereas the