Instagram decreases our self-worth

The socials are for us our daily life but often even a little bit more. They weigh ever more on our acts and on what we think. We count the ”likes” or the comments of a post on Instagram like we could change the opinion that we have of ourselves.

It can seem stupid but the socials have a strong impact on our personal consideration. Through the socials, many of us try to create a perfect vision of our personality, we try to show only our best side, hiding the real us.

It’s hard to believe, but many of us, almost everyone, are conditioned by the answers of the other users of the social digital platforms. We constantly try the agreement of the online audience and this can arrive to subconsciously change our state of mind or even our self-worth.

Online pictures of women with a positive comment, create discontent in the other users

A psychological research made by the expert Marika Tiggemann, shown that in the moment when a woman looks images on Instagram of others with positive comments, this create in her a sense of increasing discontent of her own body.

The magazine Body Image, about this research, writes: “The comments are an important part of Instagram and especially the ones about the physical aspect, so with this scientific study we wonder if those will have any consequence beyond the images“, said to the magazine the author of the psychological research Marika Tiggemann.

Tiggemann is a psychology’s professor of the Flinders University in the South of Australia. The main field of interest of Tiggemann is the research about the body’s image, especially the women’s one.

The researcher deal with specific topics like the differences of gender, the discontent feeling about our own body, the multimedial effects about the vision of ourselves, the food’s desire and the cognition of it, the change of our body through the life and the stereotypes about the fat.

A psychologic test on 128 university girls

The psychologic research observed the behaviour of 128 university girls. The 128 girls are been subject of a test: they saw the images on Instagram of attractive women, with a positive comment.

Some of them red the comments that praised the physical aspect of the women. Others red some comments that praised other aspects of the picture, the shot’s quality, the location, the outfit and so on.

Like predicted, the exposition to the comments that praised the physical aspect of the women brought to a higher discontent of the tested girls compared with the exposition of the comments about the location, local entertaiment or general topics.

It was considered so that the comments composed an important and inherent part of the images on Instagram: they fully affect our self-worth.

Marika Tiggemann suggests: “Try to comment something else!”

Even if the people write comments about the physical aspect of the women to their postes on Instagram, praising them and so writing something positive, in reality those comments put emphasis on the woman’s appearance creating an objectification and making many of them discontent of their bodies.

“The study examinated the effect of the comments on the pictures of other persons“, said Tiggemann. “So an important answer is the effect of the comments (about the appearance or about something else) on our self-worth. My suggest is to don’t comment the physical aspect of the Instagram users to avoid unwanted conditioning.
Obviusly this isn’t really easy: with Instagram all you have is a picture. Furthermore, the people post pictures exactly to be commented and listen that they a have a nice aspect, so everything is a sharp side of the social script“.

This post is also available in: Italiano