8 Dangers Of Social Media When It Comes To Your Self-Esteem

You may want to roll your eyes at the idea that there are dangers of social media. It’s just an online profile, right? Well, there are a lot of reasons you should be wary of many social media platforms. Believe it or not, most of these concerns have nothing to do with your privacy.

You’ve probably been given speech after speech about why you need to protect your privacy online, but has anyone else told you about protecting your self-esteem? If you’re like most of us, then probably not.

You may think the only thing you have to worry about when it comes to your social media profiles is your privacy, but it’s not. The dangers of social media can run much deeper. Like with your self-esteem. It can be affected greatly through your online profiles and you may not even realize it.

Your self-esteem is crucial to your well being. Someone suffering from a lack of confidence may have the dangers of social media to blame. Here’s how social media can harm your self-esteem.

# You only see the best of everyone else

This hurts all of us. People don’t put the hard stuff online. They only put the very best of everything in their lives. So when we hop online and look at our social media, all we see is everyone being extremely successful.

# And you compare your life to the version you see

We see everything people put online and automatically think about how our lives aren’t as great. Our lives aren’t that successful. This makes us feel horrible about ourselves because we sit and compare how someone else is doing to how we’re doing. But it’s not accurate.

# You aren’t fully yourself online

I think anyone who can’t express who they really are ends up feeling like there’s something missing. And that thing is themselves. When you hop on social media, you’re holding your true self back. Everything that makes you different and unique isn’t shown. You try and conform to what the online “norms” are and end up feeling like less of a person.

# You feel the need to hide your struggles

Facing different challenges in our lives is what makes us human. But one of the dangers of social media is that you get online and you don’t see anyone’s problems, so you hide your own. Keeping all of your struggles inside makes you feel worse about your life and your situation.

# The ads you see can even hurt you

Realizing how big of an impact ads can have on us is something we’re not good at. We see great looking people dressed in impeccable clothing and we just immediately compare ourselves – even when we don’t think we are. Since social media tends to have a LOT of ads, this happens the most when we’re just browsing through our feeds.

# Fake friends

How many people do you only communicate with via Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat? A danger of social media when it comes to your self-esteem is that you won’t really build genuine friendships. Many people only visually act like your friend online and then aren’t there when you have a problem. And this can make you feel less secure in yourself.

# The need for attention not being met

Social media is all about attention. You put yourself out there and hope to get that “like” or that “share.” The problem is, if you don’t get those things, you feel like less of a person. And that hurts your confidence immensely.

# It keeps you away from people in real life

Humans need to socialize. We thrive while engaging with others – even if you’re an introvert. But if you’re spending all your time on social media and using it in place of an active social life, it’ll make you feel worse about yourself.