Adolescence is difficult. Do you remember how you felt? Many of my friends can’t remember it. Some fell into rebellion, while others wanted to make it through high school.
It was a profound transition when I tried to figure out who I was. Pair that with the general stress that comes from school and friends/family relationships, and it’s not surprising that I constantly felt overwhelmed.
This was back then. Imagine now that social media has been added to the mix.
As if our children don’t have enough to deal with being constantly diminished because they can’t possibly have anything to complain about, they also have to deal with social media’s social pressure.
Social media started gaining popularity towards the end of my high school years, so I don’t feel it was ever a determining point in this part of my life. As an adult, I can now see how one can easily get sucked into social media, the world of influencers, and the “beauty community”.
It was only recently when I realized how much negativity I had on my social media feed and quickly eliminated all traces. At this moment, I realized just how much social media was affecting my adolescent daughter.
After further looking into it, I learned that 1 in 2 girls say toxic beauty advice on social media causes low self-esteem. If you really think about it, watching an influencer with perfect, airbrushed skin promotes a facial cream can distort a teen’s perception of reality.
This can make adolescence much more complicated than it already is, especially for our daughters. It is up to us to help them detoxify their social media feed, so it becomes a more enjoyable environment for them.
With tools from the Dove Self-Esteem Project, we can help our adolescent daughters navigate through the consequences of their social media on their self-esteem and confidence.
Encourage Her to Unfollow
One of the first steps towards helping your daughter detoxify her feed is by encouraging her to unfollow those pages that bring down her self-confidence. Our daughters may struggle to do this as they have been conditioned to believe their social media needs to look a certain way.
Remind your daughter that her worth is not measured by her number of followers or how many likes/comments her posts get.
Remind Her That Social Media Should Be Enjoyable
Social media should be considered a pastime. A pastime should not bring feelings of insufficiency into your life and have you questioning your looks and beauty.
Remind your daughter that social media should be a creative outlet and a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Help her find accounts that bring her joy and follow these so that she is exposed to those things that bring her happiness.
Make It a Habit
In order to have a carefully curated social media page, it is essential to continuously check your feed and see what pages or posts do not bring you joy. Like an email inbox, it is so easy to get cluttered if you do not regularly review it.
Have your daughter treat social media the same way. Sit down with her, go through her feed, and discuss how certain posts make her feel. If you notice someone is bringing thoughts that harm her self-esteem, then remind her to unfollow or mute.
In the end, helping our daughters detoxify their feed will help them see how much social media can affect their self-esteem and understand that they can help control this.