Social Media Recommendations

Social Media platforms are used by an estimated one in every four individuals world-wide. Social media is being described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol. Although there are benefits to some of these platforms such as Facebook, dangers (especially to mental health) are being identified. Based on the results of the social medial research #StatusofMind, the Royal Society for Public Health in the United Kingdom has called for social media platforms to take action in order to help combat young users' feelings of inadequacy and anxiety. One of the recommendations was the need to place a warning on images that have been digitally manipulated (e.g., curated, filtered, and Photoshopped) in an attempt to make the images look “more perfect.” This can sometimes be seen in news sources that show an actress without makup (and looking quite ordinary) along with images of the same actress in “movie makeup (and sometimes almost unrecognizable).