In the previous weeks, many of you have written about the relationships between social media sites and course topics. As this seems to be of interest to many of you, here is another post related to social media.
Should you choose to complete this assignment for course credit, please do the following:
- Read these two articles and provide a summary of what you read:
- Facebooking with Care: Social Networking Site Can Hurt Self-Esteem
- Why Does Facebook Make Us Feel Bad About Ourselves?
- What is self-esteem?
- What is the social comparison theory?
- How does this article/social media play a role in these to self-related concepts?
- Try to incorporate examples as well as integrate material from previous weeks of the course.
Self-esteem is viewed as how you see yourself at any given time. The social comparison theory is a theory that helps us to determine how good or bad we should feel about ourselves based on what others have. Basically, we compare what others have to what we feel. The article points out that when you have a lot of friends on facebook you may tend to become sad when looking at it because of all the happy and excited posts. They may make your life seem like its not as great. We spend so much of our time comparing what we don't have that it stresses us out. Then we may end up anxious or depressed because of the social pressures.
ReplyDeleteThese articles described how Facebook can have a negative effect on our lives. By obtaining hundreds of friends on this social media, it can be negative because you find yourself comparing your life to all of your friend's lives. You feel as though you need to look certain ways in pictures and have exciting experiences such as those that your friends are having. A point that was made is that the pictures or statuses that people post are not how their lives actually are. They only show the positive times in their lives, not the times when they have screaming children or fights with their spouses. They also discuss that men and women portray Facebook in different ways such as women using it to talk to people and men tend to use it as a form of competition with others.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is how you feel about yourself along with your attitude based on how you feel about yourself. The social comparison theory is the theory that describes how we as humans look for outside sources to compare our lives to. Humans use these outside sources to look at how they should live their lives or what opinions they should have on certain subjects.
The article that I read shows that we look at other people's pictures and statuses and relate those posts to our own lives. When people post pictures, we wished that our lives were like them or give the opinion that we have more exciting lives than other people. We feed off of what people post in social media and look for acceptance by getting "likes" or comments on what we post. The reaction that we get to our posts also effects how we feel about ourselves and can cause us to feel either happy and optimistic or depressed and sad. Those feelings also play a role into our overall self-esteem. Social media can either create a high or low self-esteem in an individual.
These two articles show some good and not so good sides of Facebook. This social media is popular among all ages, which makes it easy to have many friends on Facebook. It has always been assumed to be a good thing to have a lot a friends, but in this case it may not be. People will find themselves always comparing themselves to others, instead of embracing who they are. No matter how confident you are, people will always have self-esteem issues about something. Social media is a big problem with bullying and making people hate themselves. Self esteem is a personal judgement and or opinion of yourself. People can have very low or high self esteem, which can be shown by how they hold themselves. Facebook can give people low self esteem. As stated before, people find themselves always comparing themselves to others. Seeing other people pictures and posts daily will give people more things to compare themselves to. From this, more confidence and self esteem will be lost by Facebook users. What people think of us on social can cause us to get down on ourselves, which will effect our over all self esteem. Such as if you post a picture you really like of yourself and people say harsh things about it, this will cause a loss of self esteem. Facebook has many positive and negative sides.
ReplyDeleteThese two articles discuss the details on how Facebook can be bad for your self-esteem. Bringing social comparison into Facebook is inevitable. The more friends you have on Facebook can be related to the unhappiness you feel from it. In a research study, people with fewer friends had less to compare themselves to and had more positive experiences with Facebook. Being careful with what you do with your social media life is key to keeping experiences positive. Carefully choosing what you post on Facebook as well as taking a break when you feel like you're comparing yourself can help as well.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is how you view yourself and your attitude about yourself. The social comparison theory is the idea that people need to compare themselves with others in order to gain insight into their own behavior. Social comparisons can be ego enhancing. Your reference group has a huge impact on how you view yourself as well.
These articles show that having a larger reference group makes you have higher expectations of how you should be. This, in turn, lowers your self-esteem. Having higher expectations of how your life should be can also help motivate you. Motivation to do better for yourself. But if you fail at this, you may have an even lower self-esteem than you had to begin with.
Self-esteem is how we see ourselves in either a positive or negative light, including judgments and attitudes toward ourselves. The social comparison theory is how we compare ourselves to other people, especially on social media sites. The articles discuss how there is a constant need or pressure to post certain things, be it tweets, statuses, photos, videos, etc. to impress other people or "measure up" to what other people are posting on their online profiles. Facebook can be bad for your self-esteem in the sense that people post glamorous things about their lives and the most flattering pictures which, in turn, make us feel inferior to them and inadequate in comparison. Becoming addicted to Facebook and the internet, like we talked about in class, is becoming more and more common and, according to the article, dangerous to our self-esteem.
ReplyDeleteSocial media definitely has an effect on a person's self-esteem because, although we all know we shouldn't, we compare ourselves to other people. We compare how glamorous or boring our lives our to the lives of our Facebook friends. We compare our looks or our bodies to the photos posted by other people or the accomplishments people are discussing. It's important to remember that everyone has flaws and we need to have our own self-confidence and positive self-esteem to participate on social media in a healthy way.
Facebook is associated with negative mental health. Facebook is giving people a false idea of other people’s lives. Facebook itself is not causing these behaviors but people using this site are having self-destructive behavior. People continue to be excited as they add more friends but become more upset as they see other positive status updates. People with many friends have more opportunities to see positive updates that lower their own self-esteem. The article continues to say how competitive people are with each other on Facebook. Solutions are not to delete one’s Facebook account but to monitor time spent. The second article begins but explaining the positives of Facebook and asking the question “why does Facebook make people upset”. People are seen to look at other people’s lives to evaluate their own; Facebook makes this easy. People see ideal almost unimaginable things and make them seem like they should be easily completed. People are only comparing themselves to the ideal things they see on Facebook not the bad ones. Self-esteem is how a person evaluates their own live on an emotional level. Social comparison model is the way we look at ourselves compared to others. We appraise our own worth and life accomplishments based on what we see in other’s lives. Social media tends to lower self-related concepts of one’s self. According to articles social media tends to lower an individual’s self-esteem and compare their own live to others. Social media is just causing more stress than helpfulness. Stress can lead to other bad things such as emotional eating. Optimism can play a role as well. Being optimistic when seeing positive statuses or pictures rather than breaking yourself down and comparing your life others can be beneficial.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe first article claims that social networking sites, such as Facebook, can hurt self-esteem. Facebook is proving to be damaging on mental health due to constant social comparison. The site is used to showcase strengths and overcoming weaknesses. The status update trap allows people to show how great their lives are. When other people show off, it makes us feel bad about our lives. Constantly seeing good news, such as weddings, promotions, pregnancies, can make a person feel bad about their own achievements.
Facebook is also a trap for constant comparison and competition. Research shows that more time spent on the site is linked to depression symptoms. People socially compare themselves to others and compete to be the best. Instead of using the status to brag, some people use Facebook as a way to complain. According to research, the site is viewed as a safe place for people with low self-esteem to express their feelings. People with high self-esteem got more attention for a negative post than people with low self-esteem. Low self-esteem users tend to exhaust friends with constant complaining and negativity. Despite some negative aspects, the site still has some benefits. People just need to be smart and careful what they post because it represents them to the social media world.
In the second article, the author discusses why Facebook makes us feel bad about ourselves. It makes people frustrated to see others have their life together when they feel like a mess or behind. Social comparison is a huge factor in this growing problem. Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory says that humans have the internal drive to look for outside images in order to evaluate their own abilities and opinions. This is why Facebook causes us to feel like we need to measure up to everyone. It is important to remember that Facebook is only used to showcase the best pictures, funniest moment, and coolest information. It is false representation of what our lives are really like, filled with stress and hardships. In order to prevent comparison to others, we need to remember that this behavior is normal, but they are human and not perfect. We should not let Facebook dictate our feelings or thoughts.
Self-esteem is the confidence in one’s own worth or abilities. Social media and these articles play a huge role in self-related concepts. Self-image can be built or destroyed by sites such as Facebook. These articles hint at the dangers, but people still feed into the trend of social comparison. Comparing your life to others can be very stressful, possibly affecting your health. Instead of getting angry or frustrated over social media, try soothing meditation to focus solely on yourself. Learning different coping mechanisms can make going online easier to handle.
These two articles are about Facebook and how they affect ones life. They both say Facebook can cause you to feel bad about yourself or your life because you are constantly comparing yourself to your friends' lives on Facebook. People are always in competition to make their lives look perfect and only post the perfect moments or pictures online. There are also some people who do nothing but post negative things on Facebook and that too can bring a person's day down. Self esteem is the judgment of oneself and the confidence in one's own worth. The social comparison study is when people compare themselves and their lives to their friends on Facebook. This is usually people looking at their friends' accomplishments or the good things happening in their lives and wondering why good things like that don't happen to them. Then people start feeling bad about their lives and their self esteem lowers. People forget that their friends only post the positive things in life and if Facebook is making their self esteem too low then they should take a break from it.
ReplyDeleteThe concept of self-esteem is how a person thinks and feels about themselves. It is how much they think they are worth or aren't worth. Social Comparison Theory is a theory about how people look at others and then evaluate themselves. They evaluate their abilites and opinions based on what other people think or say.
ReplyDeleteThese articles both say that Facebook and social media sites are harmful. They were not designed to be harmful, but the way people are using them no a days leads them to be harmful. Having lots of friends on Facebook is assoiciated with feeling worse and depressed about one's own life. It causes people to have lower self-esteems, lower self-efficacies, and it causes more stress in one's life. People on these social media sites are constantly looking at other's statuses and pictures and then comparing themselves to those people. People tend to choose the best pictures, the funniest things, and the positive things in their lifes. They do not post all of the negative or bad things in their lifes. So people using these type of sites only see positive and happy things about others and it leaves them feeling bad about themselves and their own lifes. People evaluate themselves and their own lifes based on others that they see on Facebook and other social networking sites. One of the articles also says that increased time on these types of sites leads to social isolation, overstimulation, and decreased ability to focus. The artilce also suggests that people focus on themselves and to stop comparing themselves to others. I agree with this and think it is the right thing to do, but as a frequent Facebook user myself it is hard to do. Maybe the best thing would be for all of us to delete our Facebook accounts or for the site to completely be shut down and deleted. If this is done, I believe that people happiness, self-esteem, and self-efficacy will increase. I think that stress will be decreased, peoples personalities will improve, and academic work will improve.
These articles discuss how Facebook can affect your self esteem. Self esteem is the confidence you have in yourself. When people go on Facebook they usually upload pictures of themselves having fun with friends or family and usually only show the happy and glamorous side of their life When someone goes on Facebook and sees this they think they aren't as happy as this person and their life isn't as good as theirs. The social comparison theory states that humans actually want to look for outside images to evaluate themselves. We want to see what others are doing and make ourselves think that that is obtainable and we can measure up to what we see.
ReplyDeleteThe pressure we feel from seeing these things online can cause stress in our lives and lower our self esteem. It can cause and emotional and even behavioral response. As an emotional response we feel like we aren't good enough as others are. It might make you feel depressed. Behavioral you can try to change and try to measure up to the unrealistic things you see on social media sites.
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ReplyDeleteThe first article discussed how Facebook can create negative feelings towards our friends online, despite the feelings of connectedness we have towards them.Other peoples statuses and posts can have a direct affect on our self-esteem. If all your peers are more well off than you at the moment it can have a negative effect on your self esteem and cause you to have depressed feelings.
ReplyDeleteThe second article correlates with the first and explains why we might have those depressed feelings. We automatically compare ourselves to others and make judgements of the situation without considering other factors. We evaluate our lifestyle and make judgements about it based on other people's lifestyle. It is good to remember not to take people's statuses on Facebook to heart because they are only putting their best face forward. They are not disclosing the not so pretty things online for a reason and it is important to remember to be realistic when comparing ourselves to others.
I witnessed this firsthand this summer. My brother's friends were either starting medical school, getting married, or had just gotten engaged. He experienced feelings of depression because his friends were experiencing great things in their life at the moment and had some sort of direction in their lives. Meanwhile, he was single, living at home,and reapplying for medical school. He compared his life to theirs and it caused him to feel worse about his situation.
Self-esteem is how we evaluate our self-worth. The social comparison theory is when we compare our abilities, successes, and other facets of our life with others. We use comparisons and evaluations from others to determine our self-esteem. Social media plays a large factor in our self-concept. We compare ourselves to others constantly and use that to shape who we are or who we would ideally like to be. Social media then has an impact on our attitudes and behaviors as we try to match our current self with our ideal self. If they do not match, discrepancies can occur. If we fail to achieve our ideal self shaped by social media, feelings of depression or frustration can occur. But if we can become our ideal self, then we are more optimistic.
The first article talked about how Facebook can cause mental health issues. The article said that it could be based on the amount of friends that one has. If a person has few friends than they are limited the news feed and new pictures that they will be looking at. Compared to a person with hundreds of friends where they will constantly have new news feeds and new updated statues. They did a research study and tested how many people wrote positive statues versus negative statues. The ones who wrote positive statues got more comments. People do not enjoy to see negative statues online. So the article suggested that if you feel unhappy after using Facebook to not look at yourself as the problem or continue to compare yourself to your friends. But to see that you have an enormous amount of friends and that is causing random information into your life. The next article talked about how Facebook makes people feel bad. They explained that Facebook is used to portray only to good sides of things. They used the example of not posting videos of a child screaming or having an argument on Facebook. Those are real life events but no one will see that. People look at Facebook and compare themselves to each other just like Festinger’s Social Comparison Theory said that we compare ourselves to objects to figure out our abilities. The downfall of looking at Facebook is that the images are fake or just the best of the best. The article said that one needs to understand Facebook and not use it to measure up to others. To log off and take time for yourself and understand your needs and abilities.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is how a person feels about themselves with their abilities in life. Social comparison theory is that people relates themselves to others to measure their own abilities and their behaviors in life.
These articles show that people use social comparison theory and in turn lower their self-esteem. By comparing themselves to others based on their statues, pictures, and events one is feelings compelled to do what their friends are doing. This causes a lot of stress on a person because they are challenged to do what their friends are doing, “Keeping up with the Jones’.” By looking at Facebook the person may not realize that what is on there is only the good in the person’s life. They may have a few good pictures but that is not an everyday thing and they need to understand that. If people just focus on their lives and try to limit the amount of social media they attend to I believe that they would increase their self-esteem and personalities.
This article talks about how facebook can effect the self-esteem of one's self and others. Self-esteem is how someone views themselves, such as, their own abilities and worth. Social comparison theory is about how one perceives their abilities and beliefs by how they compare to others. This is to help decrease the anxieties and uncertainties within their own lives. Social comparison theory also helps one to gain a sense of self.
ReplyDeleteLike discussed earlier in the semester social media plays a large role in how someone feels about themselves. Facebook can cause one’s views of their life to change rather quickly. When on facebook, many people make their lives seem perfect by posting perfect pictures and ideal statuses about their friends and family. This can cause feelings of anxiety and self-doubt. People tend to look at others and think that they have achieved enough in their lives or done as much but they don’t get to see the hard work or insecurities of their facebook “friends”. On the other hand some people use facebook to complain or vent about things in their life. As discussed last week this cathartic practice is not believed to be beneficial. Venting can lead to more negativity and can have that effect on those that read the negative social media posts as well. I believe that people need to realize that social media should not be a form of social comparison because of the fact that the posts are limited and adjusted to be only the piece of the poster's life they want others to see. It's not always an actual depiction of their abilities, work lifes, families, friends or accomplishments.
The first article talks about how it is thought that Facebook can be tough on mental health. It is not necessarily the site itself but it creates a place where people can go to do destructive behavior. People makes statuses to make their life or situation seem as if it is better than most. Reading other’s posts will actually make you feel worse about yourself. Even if you know that people use Facebook to show off, it can still make you sad about your own achievements or lack thereof. It was also found that people use social sites to compare and compete with one another. People with low self-esteem will use social sites to complain.
ReplyDeleteThe second article talks about how Facebook is a type of social comparison theory but on steroids. Festinger created this theory because he believed that we have an internal drive to look for outside images so that we can evaluate our own abilities and opinions. We often compare ourselves to others to see if we “measure up”. These social networks can become a big source of stress. Most people put the best of everything they have onto these sites. This is something that we need to remember next time our brain tries to start using the social comparison theory.
Self-esteem is how a person views himself or herself physically and mentally. It is also the source we use to determine how people view us.
Festinger created the social comparison theory. It is the idea that we have a internal drive to look for outside images to compare ourselves to. Once we compare ourselves we like to ask if we “measure up”. People like to see how they compare to other people.
Social media plays a role in self-esteem and the social comparison theory because it can affect both of these things very negatively. Being on these social sites can create confidence issues that will also tend to change your attitude of yourself and make you think that you don’t measure up. This thought process would be considered the social comparison theory.
Self esteem is the way in which we view ourselves, positively or negatively. Self esteem can be built up in a variety of ways but after reading these articles it might not be built up through Facebook. The first article, "Facebooking with Care,"discusses how Facebook can be tough on our mental health. We indulge in self destructive behavior such as trumpeting our own weaknesses and comparing our achievements with others. Status updates have been studied and shown to make people feel worse because we go into the mental idea that we have to compare our lives with those of others. The second article, "Why Does Facebook Make Us Feel Bad About Ourselves," talks about many of the same discussion points that were brought up in the first article. We are constantly trying to measure up to our competition through the eyes of the Facebook world. Men have been known to compete with one another through Facebook profiles.
ReplyDeleteThe Social Comparison Theory was revolutionary in the 1950's and states that humans have a significant internal drive to look for outside images in order to evaluate their own abilities and opinions. Social Media can really play a vital role how we view ourselves or the lives of others. I know I constantly "creep" on others profiles and find myself wishing I looked like them or had gotten the job promotion just like them. I know from a personal standpoint if I am having a rough day and then scroll through my news feed to view others profiles it usually makes me feel worse about myself. I dislike the aspect of comparing myself to others but I know we all do it. That is where self esteem can play a vital role in knowing how confident we are within our own skin.
The first article talked about how Facebook use can be detrimental to self-esteem. This article was interesting to me because I found myself thinking of my own Facebook friends in many of the examples. The fact that we use Facebook to compare ourselves is not a new concept as we read an article that mentioned that about a couple weeks ago. Facebook seems to be an easy breeding ground for inferiority complexes as well as a place to let out self-esteem issues. Men and women use the sight for each in different ways. Women use the site more for connecting and men use it as a way to compare themselves to other males. I thought this was interesting because I thought more women would be using it for the reason men are. While Facebook itself is not harmful, it can be a gateway for people with low self-esteem to wallow in their negative views of themselves. Another point that caught my attention was that people do not start to have psychological problems with the site until after about 354 friends. Without reading the research I would have thought that the more friends on one’s newsfeed, the less likely one would be to actually look closely at what others are posting because there’s so much to sift through.
ReplyDeleteThe second article also talked about the pitfalls of Facebook usage. This one specified that one of the reasons we get insecure on Facebook is the fact that our friends are posting beautiful pictures of what look like perfect lives. We see pictures of sparkling diamond rings, newborn babies, as well as smiling graduation pictures that are telling us what we are not experiencing. If your friends are doing different things than you, it can be hard to remember that you chose a different path to take. The article also talked about the benefits of logging off and taking a break from Facebook. I think more people need to do this in order to keep themselves from getting too caught up in Facebook related insecurities.
Self-esteem is the accumulation of thoughts and feelings we have towards ourselves. In a way, it governs how we act every day because people act differently due to how high or low his or her self-esteem is.
The social comparison theory says individuals compare themselves to others to see how they measure up against society. It can easily be seen as an evaluation tool. Developed in 1954 by Leon Festinger, this theory gained a lot of attention and support when it was first established and is still recognized as being valid by psychologists today.
Social media has given us a new way to use the social comparison theory. Before it was only applicable to social interactions, but now we can compare ourselves to others virtually, which may not be a good thing because we aren’t always conscious that we are comparing ourselves to someone. A lot of the time these comparisons are negative and can be emotionally damaging, thereby lowering self-esteem. On the other side of this, comparisons could be narcissistic and could contribute to extremely high self-esteem levels, which the video in this week’s blog assignment cited as possibly being dangerous.
Key terms: Self-esteem, inferiority complex, social comparison theory, narcissism
These two articles discussed the positive and negative sides to Facebook and other social media sites. Social media can be good in that it helps us stay connected to people and interact with friends; however, there's a downside to it as well. Since most people only show the good portion of their lives on Facebook, the fun parties or that awesome day at work, we get the distorted view of their lives. If people start to compare their lives to this distorted view of their friends lives, it can lead to a poor sense of self and depression.
ReplyDeleteSelf esteem is how we judge ourselves for example, I am worthwhile, important, good, etc...Its the postive or negative views of ourselves and how we feel about those views; how self conscious a person is. The social comparison theory is when people compare themselves to others to gain insight on themselves and how they are suppose to act.
Facebook can lower self esteem by giving people a unreasonable expectations of what their lives should be like. People post pictures and statuses of having a really good time at some party, celebration, etc..but don't usually post about getting kicked out of school or divorced. This causes people to constantly compare their lives to an unattainable expectation which can cause depression and low self esteem. It is important to remember that Facebook is just a large public scrapbook, not what really is happening in people's lives.
Self-esteem can be defined as a collection of emotions used to evaluate an individual’s personal views of self-worth. Self-esteem can be influenced by social media via the social comparison theory. This theory states that individuals define themselves by comparing their abilities and opinions to others. This can potentially lead to self-enhancement, but it also presents several downfalls, particularly in social media.
ReplyDeleteSocial media, Facebook in particular, provides a plethora of information from others to use for comparison. This can be negative because many Facebook statuses and pictures are edited for better presentation. Another article we read for class discussed the idea that Facebook is truly a Fakebook. If an individual has low self-esteem, and they scroll through Facebook and see the supposedly perfect lives of all of their friends, it will negatively impact their self-esteem. Other individuals use social media to complain. This is also dangerous and can be self-destruction. It is extremely important to remember that Facebook is not an accurate venue to draw comparisons from.
The article ‘Facebook with Care: Social Networking Site can hurt’ talks about how Facebook can be tough on mental health. It provides a place for people to indulge in self-destructive behavior through talking about their weaknesses or comparing their accomplishments with others. People feel good that they have a lot of friends to connect with but then they feel bad when they compare themselves to all of those friends and their accomplishments. It is suggested to be mindful of how you use your time on Facebook.
ReplyDeleteThe second article ‘Why does Facebook make us Feel Bad About Ourselves?’ focuses on the social comparison we tend to do while on Facebook and how to address it. We tend to look at what other people are/have accomplished in their lives and see if we measure up. It’s easy to get caught up in other people’s lives and feel in adequate and anxiety over whether or not we’ll ever obtain these goals. One thing to keep in mind while comparing your life to other’s Facebook lives is that people don’t post the ‘bad stuff’, remember there is more than meets the eye.
Self-esteem is an emotional evaluation of one’s self, a judgment and attitude of the self.
The Social Comparison Theory is how we evaluate our worth compared to others and their accomplishments.
I think as a whole social media has a negative effect on people’s self-esteem and social comparison. As both articles say that spending a lot of time on Facebook can cause us to not feel as though we’re adequate and can cause depression-like symptoms. A couple weeks ago we talked about how as we mature we have a clearer view of the self. I think that if sites like Facebook are used excessively before someone is mature enough, it can cause lots of harm to self-esteem and self worth.
The first article describes how Facebook can affect a persons mental health in a negative way. People with a lot of friends and viewing these status updates on Facebook can actually make a person feel bad about their own achievements and what they are doing in their life.
ReplyDeleteThe second article shows how people compare themselves to each other using Facebook. When a person is on Facebook they are constantly looking at other people's postings and photography. This can lead to comparing one's life to one of their Facebook friends which can make a person jealous and not feel good about themselves.
Self-esteem is how a person feels about themselves as a whole. Social Comparison Theory is how a person feels about themselves based on others accomplishments.
I think that social media can be damaging especially due to our cultures obsession with these sites. People revolve their lives around posing their every move on these sites and compare themselves to one another. This can cause a person to feel bad about their own lives and become jealous of others. Social media sites can also be negative when it comes to online bullying that can deeply affect a persons self-esteem.
The two articles explain that a lot of our self-evaluating doesn't happen when we sit and take a look at ourselves, but when we sit and look at others: their status updates, their pictures, how many likes they got on a video, how many friends they have, etc. They also go on to explain how these posts can make us feel: while in the first article it says that we respond more positively to positive posts of others, the second article explains that these positive posts from others can lead to a negative feeling towards ourselves.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is your emotional evaluation of yourself as a person. Social comparison theory is a theory that says we evaluate our social and personal value based on how we compare to others. When you factor social media in this mix, it can be stated that Facebook is a tool we use to build our self-esteem, and that according to the social comparison theory, we compare our profiles to others, and use that to evaluate our value among others'. Referring back to week one material, I think that Facebook can be a hazard to adjustment. We learned that some of the factors that affect adjustment (how people manage or cope with challenges in daily life) were self-esteem, coping, and experience of stress. All three of these can be directly affected by the amount of time we spend on Facebook not only physically, but emotionally and mentally. Even when we aren't on Facebook, we are thinking about it. I have experienced this personally. Thinking about what we should post next, how we should word it our statuses or captions to attain the most likes possible... We can all deny it, but we crave approval and praise from our peers, and can evaluate how much approval and praise we are receiving by looking at likes and friend lists.
ReplyDeleteThe two articles discuss the issues that facebook imposes on our self-esteem. Many facebook users tend to compare their lives with their friends and that tends to cause them to feel depressed about their personal lives and makes them feel as though they have not accomplished much in their own personal lives. The authors suggest that people forget that many facebook users tend to post only the "fun-parts" of their lives and the good things that happens to them never the bad part of their live. The article reminds me of the Stress and Pinterest article that portrays mothers being stressed and having feelings as though they were not good parents. The first article shows that the more friends that a person had the more likely they were to have a low self-esteem and feel as though they haven't achieved more whereas people who had less friends did'nt experience as much low self esteem because they had less people to compare their lives to. Self-Esteem is how you view yourself. It's a realistic respect of one's self. Social Comparison Theory states that people measure their opinions and abilites by comparing themselves to other people. Social media plays a role in these concept by creating an internet based module where people can compare themselves with thousands of other people and it seems to be a pick and choose what you want to compare in your life. As the article states, people no longer have to physically meet for them to be able to converse or learn about it other they can just go on a social media website and do that and sometimes this false comparisons causes stress in a lot of people and disrupts their inner flow.
In the article Facebook With Care Social Networking Can Hurt Self-Esteem talks about how Facebook is bad on a persons mental health. It said "Facebook can be bad on mental health offering an all-too-alluring medium for social comparison and ill-advised status updates." Some people feel that adding a friend on the social networking site can make people feel cheery and connected, having a lot of friends is associated with feeling worse about one's own life. But at the same time if gives you more people to compare yourself to when you are feel down about yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe other article Why Does Facebook Make Us Feel Bad about Yourselves talks about looking at social media for what they are, and not use them as a tool to evaluate your life to see if you are “measuring up” or not. And next time you find yourself comparing yourself to friends on Facebook, acknowledge that your response is understandable and normal, but it is not a valid reason to be hard on yourself or feel guilty for your life decisions. Try to look at the goods in Facebook like being connected with family who lives far away or keeping in touch with friends that have moved away, forget about comparing yourself to other because you are who you are for a reason, nobody is alike.
Self-Esteem is ones overall assessment of ones worth as a person, this means how you see yourself as a person.The social comparison theory is how we look at outside factor to compare our lives.
ReplyDeleteThe article “Facebook with Care” explains why Facebook can be hard on mental health by allowing people to compare themselves to others. People who use Facebook experience a lower self-esteem, which is the way in which people view themselves, either positive of negatively. People make these comparisons through status updates, where it’s easy to see other’s achievements such as promotions, weddings, or babies. Overall, people who had more friends on Facebook were more unhappy after reading all of their status updates than people who didn’t have as many Facebook friends. Studies have also found that Facebook leads to symptoms of depression due to the tendency of people to compare themselves with others. In addition to the comparison that takes place on Facebook, many people use status updates to complain, which may actually lead to damaging friendships.
The second article explains why Facebook makes us feel bad about ourselves. This idea is based on the Social Comparison Theory, which states that humans have an internal drive to look for outside images in order to evaluate their own abilities and opinions. The article explains that the reason that we feel bad about ourselves after being on Facebook is because the images that we are seeing are the best ones that everyone else has chosen to post. Facebook is unrealistic in the sense that not everybody’s life is as perfect as the statuses and pictures that they choose to post.
Social media has the tendency to show people unrealistic aspects of other people’s lives, and leaves out the aspects of their lives’ that ultimately make them normal and imperfect. In week 4 an article discussed how social media, and Pinterest cause people to become stressed out. This article was almost identical to this week’s in that Pinterest causes stress due to people seeing these perfect, and sometimes unrealistic images of birthday cake ideas, the perfect wedding, or clothing that they will likely never own. Comparing their lives to these images causes people to become stressed, and ultimately have a worse self-esteem in the process.
ReplyDeleteThe article “Facebook with Care” explains why Facebook can be hard on mental health by allowing people to compare themselves to others. People who use Facebook experience a lower self-esteem, which is the way in which people view themselves, either positive of negatively. People make these comparisons through status updates, where it’s easy to see other’s achievements such as promotions, weddings, or babies. Overall, people who had more friends on Facebook were more unhappy after reading all of their status updates than people who didn’t have as many Facebook friends. Studies have also found that Facebook leads to symptoms of depression due to the tendency of people to compare themselves with others. In addition to the comparison that takes place on Facebook, many people use status updates to complain, which may actually lead to damaging friendships.
The second article explains why Facebook makes us feel bad about ourselves. This idea is based on the Social Comparison Theory, which states that humans have an internal drive to look for outside images in order to evaluate their own abilities and opinions. The article explains that the reason that we feel bad about ourselves after being on Facebook is because the images that we are seeing are the best ones that everyone else has chosen to post. Facebook is unrealistic in the sense that not everybody’s life is as perfect as the statuses and pictures that they choose to post.
Social media has the tendency to show people unrealistic aspects of other people’s lives, and leaves out the aspects of their lives’ that ultimately make them normal and imperfect. In week 4 an article discussed how social media, and Pinterest cause people to become stressed out. This article was almost identical to this week’s in that Pinterest causes stress due to people seeing these perfect, and sometimes unrealistic images of birthday cake ideas, the perfect wedding, or clothing that they will likely never own. Comparing their lives to these images causes people to become stressed, and ultimately have a worse self-esteem in the process.
ReplyDeleteThe article “Facebook with Care” explains why Facebook can be hard on mental health by allowing people to compare themselves to others. People who use Facebook experience a lower self-esteem, which is the way in which people view themselves, either positive of negatively. People make these comparisons through status updates, where it’s easy to see other’s achievements such as promotions, weddings, or babies. Overall, people who had more friends on Facebook were more unhappy after reading all of their status updates than people who didn’t have as many Facebook friends. Studies have also found that Facebook leads to symptoms of depression due to the tendency of people to compare themselves with others. In addition to the comparison that takes place on Facebook, many people use status updates to complain, which may actually lead to damaging friendships.
The second article explains why Facebook makes us feel bad about ourselves. This idea is based on the Social Comparison Theory, which states that humans have an internal drive to look for outside images in order to evaluate their own abilities and opinions. The article explains that the reason that we feel bad about ourselves after being on Facebook is because the images that we are seeing are the best ones that everyone else has chosen to post. Facebook is unrealistic in the sense that not everybody’s life is as perfect as the statuses and pictures that they choose to post.
Social media has the tendency to show people unrealistic aspects of other people’s lives, and leaves out the aspects of their lives’ that ultimately make them normal and imperfect. In week 4 an article discussed how social media, and Pinterest cause people to become stressed out. This article was almost identical to this week’s in that Pinterest causes stress due to people seeing these perfect, and sometimes unrealistic images of birthday cake ideas, the perfect wedding, or clothing that they will likely never own. Comparing their lives to these images causes people to become stressed, and ultimately have a worse self-esteem in the process.
Self-esteem is a term that is used to describe how we feel about ourselves. We can have a positive self-esteem or a negative one. One’s attitude is very important as well when dealing with self-esteem. The social comparison theory is the idea that we compare our lives to the lives of others and often times it makes us either feel really good or really bad. The social comparison theory also involves outside sources or even sources within our own homes. Comparing to our brothers and sisters, ect. The articles both talk about how social media is a huge factor in the social comparison theory. Facebook especially is causing an issue for people. While on Facebook, often times people are seeing status’s or pictures that describe really happy moments in a person’s life like a new baby or a promotion. Seeing these things can make one feel upset or disappointed about how their own life is going or where it is headed. In the other direction, status’s can also be extremely pessimistic and make other people seem more stressed or upset. Because social media can cause so much stress and comparison, it can be harmful to one’s self esteem. The example in the article was talking about how a young person was a very successful CEO at age 25 and the person who was noticing their status’s was struggling at age 35. She felt down on herself and had negative thoughts about where her life was headed. The reaction that we get to seeing Facebook posts and pictures plays a huge role in how we view ourselves, how we perceive our self-esteem. Sometimes if one is trying to cope with a stressful situation they might go online with the intentions of just relaxing and catching up on social media but in reality, whether they are aware of it or not, it could be making their stress worse. Sometimes people who tend to have more of an introvert personality will use Facebook as a means of venting. However, their venting could cause a negative effect on others self-esteem.
ReplyDeleteIn Facebook with Care, they looked over three studies which covered mental health, social comparisons, and status updates. What they found out is that Facebook itself isn’t harmful but it provides a place that people can be affected by self-destructive behavior. Status updates are usually written to put their lives in the best possible way and reading these could make a person feel worse. People usually get a feeling of social connectedness when a friend request is sent to them, but when people have lots of friends they start to feel worse. The time spent on Facebook is linked to depression symptoms because of the comparisons and competitions. However, people with low self-esteem find Facebook as a place to express themselves, but more times than normal the status will be ignored. Time on Facebook needs to be monitored and reminded that people brag on Facebook and it may not be how it actually is.
ReplyDeleteIn Why Does Facebook Make us Feel Bad about Ourselves, the author explains that most people take part in social media to keep in touch with relatives and friends, stay updated with causes and organizations, reconnect with old friends, meet new people, and share milestones. Some psychologists believe that increased time online leads to social isolations, overstimulation and decreased ability to focus. Leon Festering developed the Social Comparison Theory that pretty much states that humans are programmed to look at what others are doing and then try to measure up to them. There are constant reminders on Facebook of people being successful, having fun, and exploring that makes the viewers think that they aren’t doing something right. However, most people choose the best and funniest moments to post online. Hardly anyone posts about being laid off a job or a picture of their kids screaming while shopping.
Self-esteem refers to one’s overall assessment of one’s worth as a person. In other words, it is a judgment of yourself and how confident you are. The social comparison theory states that humans have a significant internal drive to look for outside images in order to evaluate their own abilities and opinions. The theory states that people look for social cues in others to see if they measure up to them. Social media plays a role in this theory because on these sites, people can post whatever they want. Whatever they post, they usually post the best possible picture or status. This means that their followers or friends will think that they aren’t living up to that and are doing things wrong. In a previous article that we read, the writer also stated how the social network users post “picture perfect” moments. The article was relating to moms and stated that they feel a sense of anxiety and failure when they go online because they know that there will be pictures or statuses of someone doing better.
The articles talk about how social media websites, such as Facebook, has a negative impact on our life. One article says that the more friends we have on Facebook, the worse we feel about ourselves. For instance, we are comparing ourselves to our friends on Facebook which makes us feel stressed or depressed. For example, we may see a picture of our friend going skydiving and we are wondering ‘why can’t we do anything fun.’ We may also feel that we are behind in life but in reality, we are not, they are just posting pictures and updates on the good things in their life; it does not show a realistic view.
ReplyDeleteAs I said in the first post, self-esteem is how you feel about yourself. It may to be good or bad; outside factors can have an effect on how high or low your self-esteem is. The important thing is, is that you need to have self-respect. The social comparison theory is how we feel about ourselves by comparing ourselves to others.
These concepts correlate with the articles and social media. If people are posting pictures and statuses about getting married; you may feel bad if you don’t even have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Social media does have a huge influence on how people look at themselves. For example, there are numerous ads (possible even friends) on Facebook for weight loss pills or diets and show before and after pictures of people. You could feel about yourself if you see a picture that has the same body shape as you but you feel that you are fine just the way you are. After seeing those all the time, you may begin to feel differently about yourself. In previous weeks, I talked about eating disorders and depression. This was a starter and trigger for my friend who had an eating disorder. It was so hard to get away from instances like this.
These articles described the different negative effects that Facebook can have in our lives. Going through Facebook and comparing oneself to your friends can hurt your self-esteem. When going on to Facebook you can see your friends and wonder why you have not achieved as much as them, this, however, can have the opposite effect when you post things and see your achievements compared to others. Facebook is a new medium for competition, especially for men. It is good to not be on Facebook continuously and to work on oneself, instead of constantly evaluating and comparing yourself to others.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is the confidence and satisfaction with one’s own worth and abilities. This is similar to self- respect and self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is just the use of this confidence in your worth and how you use it to become you capable of achieving goals.
The social comparison theory is the theory that humans have an internal drive to look for outside images to evaluate their own life. This is similar to the comparative justification principle, if you are ahead or similar to other you justify your situation.
These articles point out the ways in which we have started using this new medium to compare ourselves to others to gain self-worth. Social media it starting to make people less satisfied with what they are doing and who they are. We seem to dwell on those we know who are in a better situation, and then we get down on ourselves because we have not achieved as much as them.
This article discussed how Facebook can potentially have negative effects on people. People who have a lot of friends on Facebook are more likely to have lower self-esteem. They see all these other posts from their friends about how happy and awesome their friend’s lives are and then they judge themselves based on how their friends are doing. The things that people put on Facebook are usually the exaggerated parts of their lives rather than the everyday version of their lives. That is one thing that people need to think about when they see Facebook statuses and pictures and wish that their lives were going that well.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is the term used for how you view yourself, and how confident you feel about who you are. The social comparison theory is the theory that explains that as individuals, we are always looking for outside sources to compare ourselves to. Not only do we compare ourselves but we harshly judge our lives and the choices we have made along the way.
We use things like Facebook to compare our lives to others and to see how we should change ours. Going on these social media sites and seeing all of these other people makes us stand back and take a look at ourselves. We judge ourselves on what we see of others, but in reality, their life is not like what you see on Facebook. Most people only post the good things in our lives on these types of sites so they cannot be counted as normal, everyday things. Social can help create low or high self-esteem in us, but the results are rarely realistic.
Facebook can lead to social isolation, over stimulation, and a decreased ability to focus. It can make us belittle ourselves, and is becoming a source of stress because we’re constantly viewing status updates and pictures and deciding mentally if we measure up to them. People generally tend to put up status updates and pictures that make their lives look glamorous, and not necessarily what their actual day looks like. They will put up the most flattering pictures of themselves, and that’s obviously not what they look like twenty-four seven. The social comparison theory developed by Leon Festinger, states that, “humans have a significant internal drive to look for outside images in order to evaluate their own abilities and opinions.” I certainly agree with this, as I catch myself comparing myself to others. Many of my old classmates from high school are off traveling around the world, getting married, or having kids. That is clearly not what my life is looking like currently, but I am completely fine with that.
ReplyDeleteThis type of thinking however can have a negative impact on an individual. Reading your friends Facebook statuses can make you feel worse about yourself and your life. Research has proven that high amounts of Facebooking and depression tend to go hand in hand. One of the articles discussed that men who use facebook tend to compete with one another, while women utilize it to connect. I’m not sure if I agree with this, because I think that both genders actually do a little bit of both. The statement really surprised me, and I would have thought that it would have been the opposite. On Facebook, the more people complain and vent about their lives, the more distance their friends actually put between them. An individual who generally has high self-esteem that updates a negative status will actually have more friends who care. On the contrary, an individual who generally has low self esteem and updates a negative status, actually seems to drain their friends. The textbook definition of self-esteem is “one’s overall assessment of one’s worth as a person; the evaluative component of the self-concept.”
I think these articles have really gone along with some of the concepts we have been talking about in class, and previous blog posts. In particular, the post about social media sites like Instagram, Pinterest, etc. correlating with mothers feeling like their not measuring up. Social media sites enable people to brag, and make their lives look like the all American dream. However, individuals just need to realize that most people don’t put up pictures of how their lives are truly going and that no one is perfect.
The two articles seemed to state the same thing. The first one was more direct saying that Facebook can cause a decrease in your self-esteem because you are constantly comparing yourself to your friends' Facebook life. While the second one beat around the bush saying that there are positives in using Facebook but it always returned to stating that you should limit your time on Facebook because somehow depression and the usage of Facebook are related.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is how you feel about yourself. Self-esteem can be good or bad, it just depends on how you see yourself, if you feel worthy or not, etc. The social comparison theory is when we find out how we feel about ourselves by comparing ourselves to others. Social media I think plays a huge role in how people see themselves. I think it is pretty obvious because there are many girls and guys that are either obese or stick think or worry too much about what kind of food they are eating and how much they are working out. It is all about image and not how you feel about yourself. I think this is where my stress during middle and high school derived from. I was always worrying about my image because everyone else was.
These two articles described how social media, in particular Facebook, can be detrimental to the mental health of people that use it on a fairly regular basis. The articles do not say that Facebook itself is bad, but that certain actions on the website cause reactions within the brain that affiliate with negative behavior, for instance, depression may be caused by seeing so many positive status updates when one is having a bad day.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is the thoughts one has about one’s self. This is the attitude and idea about personality and behavior for one’s self. The social comparison theory is the idea that one will compare one’s self to others based on what the others have in their own lives.
I believe these articles play into these two self-related theories by showing how one’s self-esteem can be affected by social comparison not only in the traditional sense but in the ‘digital age’ our generation lives in currently. Not only does one have to be outdone by a neighbor or good friend or coworker, but now the worry about online friends looms as well. The study showed that people with a higher amount of friends had a stronger reaction to positive and negative statuses, I would be interested to know how many of those people the recipient knew very well on a personal level. Social media causes a new medium for self-esteem and self-efficacy by providing another medium of communication.
These articles explained the negative side of Facebook and the impact it has on how we live. By seeing hundreds of online friends and their seemingly perfect lives, you may start comparing yourself to them which can end in a very negative self-image. No one sees what goes on behind the screen, they only see the perfectly edited picture or happy statuses of accomplishments or success, which makes for a very unrealistic life, but no matter how unrealistic they may seem, you still find yourself comparing yourself to them. Self-esteem is how you view yourself and how proud you are to be you. The social comparison theory helps us determine how good or bad we should feel about ourselves when we see what others have. Social media plays a role in these self-related concepts because it opens the window to compare yourself with your online friends, but on the positive side can also be a way for you to express how proud you are of yourself when you accomplish something. To no surprise, these articles tie back to the previous article we read about how mom’s on social media feel unaccomplished because they are constantly comparing themselves to their friends on social media sites.
ReplyDeleteThese articles discussed the negative aspects of Facebook and the effects it can have on us and the lives we live. Those who use Facebook regularly can have their mental health affected by such regular use of the site. The site itself is not necessarily deemed a bad thing, but some aspects of it can cause depression and anxiety is others.
ReplyDeleteSelf-esteem is how you feel about yourself. This relates to the social comparison theory because the social comparison theory is the idea that we will compare ourselves to others based on what they have and we don't.
I think that social media plays a huge role on self-esteem. It plays a role in these concepts because it opens a whole nother world in which you can compare yourself and your life to others. Like the previous article we read about mothers getting anxiety from social media sites and sites like Pinterest, these articles show how ones mental health can be affected by such comparisons via the digital world.