Analysis Of How Social Media Is A Toxic Mirror By Rachel Simmons

In “How Social Media Is a Toxic Mirror” Rachel Simmons discusses the recent concerns regarding the impact of social media on body confidence. Furthermore, Simmons conducts studies and has interviewees that are avid users of social media, in order to prove her point that social media truly is a toxic mirror and involves various body image issues. She then explains how parents are able to help their adolescent children in order to steer them clear of this horrific problem. Ultimately, Simmons suggests that with the rapid growth of technology, visual platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are delivering immense amounts of evidence linking social media use to body image concerns, self-objectification, and unrealistic standards in society. Simmons conducted research lead by psychologists in 2016 and it was discovered that there was strong cross-cultural evidence linking social media use to body confidence, over-top dieting, body surveillance, and a drive for thinness in adolescents. The author continues on to point out that this does not mean social media is the primary cause of the problems, but there is an obvious association between them. Next, she claims that social media applications, such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat offer a countless number of tools that basically allow teens to earn approval for their appearance
Users have the power to alter their faces and bodies in pictures to achieve what they define beauty as. Covering up pimples, whitening teeth, and thinning-out their thighs are some examples of what adolescents are able to do to brush-up their images. Simmons believes that as a whole, this provides an illusion of control. Teens tend to crave control; therefore, they assume that if they spend more time and really working at it, they will have the abilities to improve at being