The Media and Self – Esteem

When you hear the word media and self – esteem, what comes in your mind? Maybe some of you think that media are the technologies and reporters, and self – esteem is being confident to yourself and abilities. But then, what are their relationships?
Our world is full of media; it reaches people to communicate widely in our society. In today’s life, all of us grow in a society where people can’t avoid the media. Even our parents, our Lolo and Lola, our Tita and Tito, who are not expose to this sort of influences, and not susceptible to the impact that social media may have on individuals. In the past few years, some speculations to as of what those impacts might be are underway. Almost everyone asked this question: is the media killing your self – esteem? One interesting fact that I research about social media says that girls spend more time using the internet than the boys do. In our society, is it already common for the other girls to have a bad issue about their self than the boys? And could this internet usage be pushing that even further? Maybe there is an impact because the media somehow forces us to transform or change our perceptions of ourselves. And most of all, we constantly comparing others to an ideal that probably isn’t very realistic like fairytale. In another way, our self – esteem also possible to be affected in social media sites. For example, in Facebook, it is the most used of all other sites with almost 750 million likes, shares, and views worldwide. According to what I’ve research, some professionals believe that this could actually be a self – esteem improvement, because of the affirmative image that we can create in ourselves on this websites. And also, other studies have found that people with lack of self – esteem have the chance to spend more time on these kinds of sites than people who are more confident of themselves. This can also be a negative effect on their self-image because sites like Facebook and Twitter only show a certain aspects of people’s lives, and it tends to be affirmative aspects. Once again, this creates an unrealistic comparison. In this case, media influence on self – esteem seems to be a toss-up. Although it is already been widely assumed that this media plays a negative role in affecting self – esteem and some professionals starts to believe the opposite and that is the affirmative role. And with all of this in our life, I believe that it depends in us. But for some people, it may increase their self – esteem and for the others it may be lessen. But then again, all of us are different and we just need to learn the most suitable for us.
Therefore, media is important because it is one of the main ways for our society for youth. Because media also allows the presentation of certain parts that may be rewarded or praised by the community. Praised from these behavior may improve our self – esteem. On the other side, media can damage self-concepts and lower self – esteem in its interpretations of our ideal body. In addition, media also provides sources that can support the behavior being shown. Media allows for confirmation from peers that contribute to identity development while damaging and improving self – esteem in the process.