How Selfies Contributes to Girls Low Self- Esteem

Selfies: Photographs that a person has taken of his/herself, typically taken with a smartphone or webcam, to be shared on social media.


For many people (including myself) selfies are a way to boost self-esteem and document how good we look and feel. We use Instagram and Snapchat filters to see what makes our selfies as aesthetically pleasing as possible, but what we do not realize is that these filters subconsciously lower our self-esteem.
Parents who want to provide a healthy counterbalance to the pressures of social media can start by evaluating how they use social media themselves. Make sure you aren’t talking too much about the pictures you post or see, or ask your children to take too many pictures. The occasional photo is fine, of course, but make a point of prioritizing being in the moment, too. “If you’re taking your kid to a concert, don’t allow them to film the whole thing and see it only through the eyes of the camera,” says Dr. Hamlet. “That’s reinforcing this concept that just being here is not good enough.”

Dr. Hamlet also recommends that parents encourage teens to become more mindful about how they use their phones — and model doing this, too. “Before you pick up your device, understand why you’re picking it up. What emotional state are you in? Are you anxious? Picking up that phone to check to see what’s on social media is probably going to heighten that anxiety. The same with sadness. It’s just going to make it worse.”

Try having a plan for what you’re going to do on Instagram or Snapchat. This might include how long you’ll be using it and what you want to see. And while you are using social media, observe how it makes you feel, and be ready to put it down if it starts making you feel bad.

Building self-esteem

Prioritizing a girl’s appearance is nothing new in society, but with selfies girls are getting inundated with the feedback that how they look is important. That’s why it is up to parents to make sure girls are getting the message that what women think and do is even more important. Don’t hold back from complimenting your daughter on her appearance, but make an effort to compliment her at least as much for the things she does and how hard she works.

While it is good for anyone’s self-esteem to like the way they look, it is crucial to have many sources of self-esteem. For a young woman’s long-term happiness, it will be more deeply rewarding for her to find things that she cares about and practice doing them. Dr. Hamlet calls this “developing mastery and accumulating positives in your life.”

Having a personal interest in something and seeing how your skills grow with time and effort makes you feel proud of what you can do, and takes the focus away from achieving perfection, which is impossible. It also encourages girls to look inside themselves for their self-esteem (and not just to compliments from others) which is an important part of growing into a happy, confident woman.