When scrolling through social media; such as Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and Snapchat, the posts are seen as perfect and unfair. Realistically speaking, this is an inaccurate representation of the actual lives these influencers are living. 

We often forget that all types of social media are controlled by the people who post about their lives/ themselves. This makes an automatic filter added to each and every post. This filter is added so the person posting the photos is shown with the perfect lifestyle and choices. These posts are often shown by in-the-moment photos so the viewers are tricked into thinking these are raw pictures of their everyday life. An example of one of these posts is a perfectly sunny beach vacation. These could be true, although the photos posted could have been taken on one of the 6 days on vacation where the rest of the days were rainy. With these so-called “expectations,” viewers obtain a negative view of themselves and their lives. 

Humans are naturally social creatures. Humans like to connect with others. Humans also compete with each other naturally. The truth is, everyone to some extent likes to compete with other people and show off. This makes scrolling through these platforms difficult to do because we do not remember this while doing so. This jealousy often turns into hatred because of the want to be better than others. This also explains the reason why we post what we post. We post these to make other people feel jealous and to feel like we are better than the viewers. These feelings are extremely unhealthy. With these emotions towards others, a level of anger is created towards the people who posted something we would like for ourselves. This creates low self-esteem and low levels of mental health.

As stated previously, humans are naturally competitive. With this competitive nature, when someone is proven to be better than us, we feel less than others. Along with the feeling of having a worse life than the people we are viewing, body image also becomes a factor. When posting a photo we find attractive of ourselves, this can include being on a beach in a bikini for example. As humans insecurities are something that everyone struggles with at some point in their life. These insecurities can be easily escalated when our insecurities are shown as something we are jealous of others. By increasing our jealousy and insecurities, our mental health is decreased. Mental health decreasing is like a flower never getting water. The flower slowly looses its petals and beauty then turns brown and dry. The number of eating disorders in teens today has increased exponentially over the past few years since social media was invented. People are struggling severely with eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia, etc. hurting their overall health and well-being.

Because social media is relatively new, humans did not know these outcomes would occur until feelings of jealousy and anger had become a habit in these users. These apps have created a decrease in mental health and the outlook on others.