Antoinette Capili
Since the grand opening of the renowned blogging website, Tumblr in 2007, there has been an overwhelming “15 billion page views a month” 1. From this time on, Tumblr has played a significant role in shaping an individual’s identity and personality towards themselves and society. The Tumblr environment has remarkably transformed the perspectives of adolescents’ own appearance and is one of the main contributors for the desire of teenagers to conform and stick to what is supposedly the norm of the status quo. It has since had a negative impact on girls psychologically. This report will discuss the images of quotes, types of blogs, subcultures in the tumblr community and diets. “85% of the 20 people surveyed own a tumblr account” 2 Tumblr has become a major success among adolescents, however excessive blogging has negative impacts on adolescent girls. Tumblr allows for “the ease of sharing and finding bloggers with common interests, a parent-free environment and the diary-like feel of its blogs” 3 . Many images on tumblr are in the form of quotes that are relevant to an adolescents life, quotes such as “you broke me”, “I’m Nothing, I’m always Nothing” or “I wish I was skinny” can make any person feel worse about themselves, yet these images are blogged and reblogged constantly, causing a domino effect of adolescents feeling bad about themselves and having their self esteem drop. As a consequence of the success of Tumblr many adolescents -girls in particular- feel miserable about themselves. Images of quotes are just the beginning of how Tumblr can make a teenage girl feel unconfident with her body image. “Thinspo” Blogs “Thinspo- Short for “Thin- spirational,” photos of waferthin girls, pro-anorexia quotes” 4 images found on blogs like this in particular have a pessimistic psychological impact on adolescent girls. Many girls blog/reblog these types of images “For