Sexualized Images on Social Media and Adolescent Girls’ Mental Health: Qualitative Insights from Parents, School Support Service Staff and Youth Mental Health Service Providers
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Research Design
2.2. Participants
2.3. Recruitment
2.4. Data Collection
2.5. Data Analysis
3. Results
3.1. Potential for Comparison
I suppose like all parents, I worry about the images that she [daughter] sees [on social media], particularly things like perceptions of body image.(Parent 9)
It [Instagram] is just almost completely about looks, you know, it’s pretty rare that you see anything on there [Instagram] that’s about what somebody’s achieved.(Youth mental health service provider 10)
It’s [Instagram account daughter follows] more of tips and hints rather than sexualizing anything. She [the Instagram account] puts a before and after photo up. She will have someone who looks very plain or ordinary and then has her make-up done and just looks absolutely stunning. It kind of shows you that the things you see in the magazines are full-on hair and make-up but if they took all that off, they just look like you and me, ordinary or whatever. Although it’s make-up, it’s not really body image.(Parent 8)
I think nowadays they’re more influenced by their peers and less by celebrities. At least that’s what I’m hearing from the girls that we see. They’re talking more about comparing themselves to the photos that are posted by peers. I think they’re comparing how many likes they’re getting compared to peers and I don’t know if there’s a certain number that they’re after or there’s something that validates that picture, but I definitely have seen that.(Youth mental health service provider 5)
They [girls] compare themselves to each other [on social media].(Parent 4)
We’ve had a few eating disorder problems, diagnosis, and that sort of thing. Social media is a contributing factor, how you look is how people rate you as a person and they’re comparing themselves to what girls post of themselves.(School support service staff 7)
I think probably for the bulk of girls, they don’t meet that level of perfection that they feel that everybody else has, you know, has got endless legs and a fantastic figure and they can’t ever meet that. So, I think for a lot of girls, they’re beating themselves up even more, you know, that they’re not pretty enough. It’s so unattainable and so unrealistic by and large.(Youth mental health service provider 10)
In my three years on the mental health unit at (public children’s hospital), I would say probably 90% to 95% of the teenage girls that we saw had self-esteem issues in some form and a huge portion of them had body image issues as well. It’s not often their presenting complaint of why they come into hospital but definitely there.(Youth mental health service provider 7)
In conversations and talking with them [girls], they might be having some really significant depression or anxiety but underneath that, almost every one of them has some body dissatisfaction or body image issues that are a contributing factor of that more overarching presenting problem.(School support service staff 7)
Have you heard of the stress vulnerability model where you’ve got a bucket and you’re just filling it up with water and it starts overflowing? Every little stressor is a punch in that bucket, you get a hole in that bucket and I think social media and access to all the sexualised images is just another punch in the bucket. I think, already, it’s going to be on top of a lot of other issues.(Youth mental health service provider 1)
In terms of anxiety, depression, eating disorders, I think a lot of that stuff can be more recently—I don’t wanna say the social media stuff is the cause of it but it can contribute in a negative way without great strong realisation, I think, from the person that’s what they’re doing. So, not actually aware that their social media usage is actually feeding into their anxiety or their eating disorder or their depression.(Youth mental health service provider 2)
3.2. Pressure to Conform
[There’s] pressure on teenage girls to be cool. I don’t like it [how girls portray themselves on Instagram], particularly. They do seem to be under pressure to meet a certain look or conform to a certain standard.(Parent 1)
They’re seeing what other people are getting likes for, and then they’re getting an idea of what they should put out there and often it’s a certain type of sexualized look that they’re reinforced now of what is beautiful, what is desirable. So, there’s that pressure from there. And then when they maybe don’t get the likes that they would like or the comments that they would like, then that can be really devastating for them.(School support service staff 7)
They feel they need to put up a certain front, they need to look a certain way, they need to show themselves a certain way, so that they actually become accepted and become valued through the likes and comments and things like that on social media.(Youth mental health service provider 9)
I think the appearance anxiety is more prevalent in the girls than in the boys. I think girls think about these things [their appearance and approval from their friends on social media] a lot more intensely.(Parent 1)
[I work with] young vulnerable girls who are looking for somewhere to belong. So, they’re more vulnerable, I think, to being sexualized. It’s a group norm for them and you get these girls showing you this very glamorised photo of themselves dressed in a short frock or whatever and they’ve got lots of likes and that’s positive feedback for them. And they already have problems with body image and eating disorders.(Youth mental health service provider 8)
There is a bombardment of sexualized images and working with girls with additional trauma and other stuff going on, I can’t detach their history from their sexualized behavior. It definitely leads to eating disorders and wanting to be thin and exercising a lot, that’s often how it starts.(Youth mental health service provider 1)
I can’t think of an eating disorder assessment I’ve done in probably the last five years that hasn’t included a social media aspect. There’s always something. It’s always part of it as a contributing factor.(Youth mental health service provider 4)
3.3. Counteracting Negative Influences
One of the things we talk about is around following helpful sites on Instagram, so you get them [girls] to follow headspace, What’s Up, those kinds of things, so that they’ve got some positive influences in their feeds and got access to [support] numbers they need.(Youth mental health service provider 4)
[I asked the girls] to think about what they value in a friend, what kind of things they would like in a partner, and after writing them down, asked if anyone could show me where it says beautiful, tall or rich? They had written things like sense of humour, kind, likes animals, and we noted the inconsistency to the things they often aspire to be and in reality, they don’t rate those things that much themselves. They haven’t picked their friends because they have got long blonde hair. They want someone that’s kind and honest and laughs at their jokes.(Youth mental health service provider 10)
In terms of her body image, she definitely sees her body as something that she needs to fuel properly in order to do that [ballet] and she needs to care for it in order to be able to do what she wants to do with it.(Parent 9)
School psychs absolutely have a role in helping staff understanding social media literacy themselves to be able to then pass it on [to students], but it’s whether the school feels it’s a priority or whether the school has that, I guess, philosophical approach to either, “Alright, well how are we going to educate the kids? How to do this?” rather than how we’re going to get rid of social media problems in our school. That’s not going to happen. It’s about helping the students to better prepare for when they are faced with difficulties on social media or with content whether or not they’re sure how they feel about that.(School support service staff 7)
3.4. Keeping up to Date
Not only do we kind of have to keep up with the times, but it’s important for me to know what she’s [daughter] talking about and what she’s up against because if I don’t know, then I can’t help her.(Parent 11)
I think it’s got to do with how we’re helping these girls, or these young ladies feel good about themselves because there’s clearly an issue which is why they’re going down this route of the sort of social media use because a lot of them aren’t feeling great about stuff at school, not really doing anything about it. They’re [the school] saying don’t do it, don’t share these sort of photos, but I guess if they’re feeling low, or they’re feeling down, or they’re not feeling great about themselves, and for them in some ways that’s a coping mechanism, but it helps them, so maybe that night or the next day and then they stop and go what else can they do to increase their self-esteem, their wellbeing.(School support service staff 6)
I think clinicians are just gonna have to shift and get updated—There’s now a section in our assessment on social media because it’s becoming such an issue, you can’t just add it into other problems. It has its own section now. School has section and when you consider it in a context, home has a section, family has a section, and now social media has its own section. So, our systems just changed.(Youth mental health service provider 4)
One of the girls, she’d pose for a photo, and then instantly be, “What do you think? Look at this. What do you think of this photo? Which one should I keep to put on my Instagram?” Really concerned, “Oh, no one will probably like it anyway.” A real negative sort of, “Oh, you know, I’m not as pretty.” I didn’t know what to say.(Youth mental health service provider 3)
Parents need education around basic connections, particularly mother and daughter, because I think that was a big factor when I was working on the wards. It’s just that parents had no idea what was going on and trying to explain it [the difficulties related to social media their daughters were experiencing] to them, they had no concept of any of it. So, I think that’s a massive thing, so that they can help their daughters to navigate those things [social media] themselves too.(Youth mental health service provider 7)
Parents need to step up, but the reality is that all of the girls that we see in mental health services have not been—for lots of reasons, have not been parented. So, there’s a disconnect often between the parent and the child. They [parents] don’t parent because they’re already really traumatized themselves or they’ve got their own substance abuse issues, or they’re completely disconnected, or they expect their daughters to exhibit self-care from a young age. Parents could benefit from support but it’s a complex issue and I don’t know that the parents of our target demographic [girls receiving treatment in youth mental health services] will respond to any sort of global approach.(Youth mental health service provider 8)
Not only do we [parents] have to keep up with the times, but it’s important for me to know what they’re [daughters] talking about and what they’re up against [on social media] and where there is support for them, because if I don’t know, then I can’t help them.(Parent 11)
3.5. Approachable and Trustworthy
I think maybe they’d [girls] be a bit worried about going to the school [for support], really. It could be digging the hole deeper for themselves because then it might need to be brought to the parents’ attention. I don’t know how far it would go with respect to confidentiality.(Parent 2)
I think they [schools] should be [a helpful source of support] cos they [girls] spend a lot of hours there. A teacher that they [girls] click with, that you could share things with and trust, I think it could be a first port of call.(Parent 3)
She [daughter] does have one teacher at school that she really likes and she does talk to all the time, so maybe a teacher is always good as well. I know there’re some teachers she wouldn’t talk to about anything, but then she’s got one or two teachers that she’s really close with.(Parent 6)
I think it would be great if they [schools] took these kind of young, who can relate, just almost out of university and talking to them [girls], or having guest speakers to come around and just say, “Hey, listen.” I think that would be really helpful at school for young women.(Parent 6)
I think working in the context that I do, it’s quite a low socioeconomic area and their [girls] parents may not necessarily always have the most supportive approach to difficulties, and we do have a good team here [at the school] and it’s quite a varied team. A lot of students do come here [student services] as a safe place and safe rapport I guess, which we are lucky but I know that’s not always the case. It depends on the skills of the team, and it depends on the make-up of the team and also school culture. We have a really supportive school culture here in terms of student services support which is good.(School support service staff 7)
The idea of confidentiality probably appeals to a certain extent that they [girls] can talk about it but speaking from our girls’ perspective here [at school], I think we do a pretty good job in having that sense of trust to come to us and we’re not judgemental, that we can help them. There’s something affirming about someone face-to-face, things that you can see, you can read their facial expression, you can talk and you develop some sort of connection, whereas online, I think, it’s a voice or they could be typing or whatever it is, that you haven’t got that personable feel, which I think we all do.(School support service staff 1)
I think it’s really important just to be able to say to them [daughters], “If you see something that’s really gross or upsetting [on social media], you can tell me, and I’m not gonna freak out. Let’s just have a chat about it.”(Parent 11)
I had a talk with her [daughter] last night and I said, “Do you ever feel sort of down or concerned about any of the images that you see [on social media]? Does it make you feel—in terms of comparison, do you feel lesser?” She said, I’ll look at them and think—oh, she’s got a nice body or I like that dress or I like the way she’s got her makeup done,” but she said, “I don’t really feel bad about it. It’s just how it is.” I said, “That’s great.” And I sort of took the opportunity to say, “Look, if that ever does change and you wanna talk about any of this, you can.”(Parent 10)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Papageorgiou, A.; Cross, D.; Fisher, C. Sexualized Images on Social Media and Adolescent Girls’ Mental Health: Qualitative Insights from Parents, School Support Service Staff and Youth Mental Health Service Providers. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2023, 20, 433. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20010433
Papageorgiou A, Cross D, Fisher C. Sexualized Images on Social Media and Adolescent Girls’ Mental Health: Qualitative Insights from Parents, School Support Service Staff and Youth Mental Health Service Providers. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2023; 20(1):433. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20010433
Chicago/Turabian StylePapageorgiou, Alana, Donna Cross, and Colleen Fisher. 2023. "Sexualized Images on Social Media and Adolescent Girls’ Mental Health: Qualitative Insights from Parents, School Support Service Staff and Youth Mental Health Service Providers" International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20, no. 1: 433. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20010433