Pressure On Social Media

While social media continues to evolve into the most toxic place on the Internet, there becomes added pressure to post things that line up with today’s beauty standards.

Elle Barnett, Rylee DeSaulniers, Gretchen Van Iddekinge

The perfectly contoured nose, clear skin with no imperfections, and overall a life that looks flawless. This is what all of the posts we see on social media look like. They follow an unrealistic standard that it made to look like reality. We all then post following that standard which adds to the toxic environment that social media already is. When people, especially teens, feel like they need to follow that standard in order to fit in. And that creates a pressure to be perfect online and makes us pick apart our appearance But what we see is not reality. We interviewed West High students to get their opinion on pressure on social media and how it might negatively affect them and what they chose to post on social media.