CS 371 - Blog post #3- Teagan Haggerty

I will be discussing the perspective of Instagram usage amongst teenage girls through the presence of Technological determinism that enhances anxiety leaving adolescent girls to have negative thoughts about body imaging and self-esteem through social comparison. Technological determinism is how technology changes society's culture, impacting our everyday lives. Gayle's article "Facebook aware Instagrams harmful effect on teenagers girls, leak reveal" portrays the negative impacts Instagram has on teenage girls. Nancy Baym's concept of interactivity and temporal structure allows teenagers to connect with peers, whether asynchronously or synchronously, where teenagers are at a delicate place in their lives where their peers easily influence them along with what they see on social media as they heavily rely on mediated messages to decode information. Due to the numerous messages teenagers decode and interpret information on Instagram relates to Tom Standage's reading; "Writing on the Wall," as he notes users "can also create it, comment on it, share it, discuss it and even modify it. The result is a shared social environment and sense of membership in a distributed community" (Standage, 2013). The quote relates to how technological determinism changes teenagers' social media experience due to being deceived from reality and can enhance cyberbullying. An interesting article I found called "Social Media Addiction, Linked to Cyberbullying" by Kathryym Kao discusses how teenagers are given the ability to access worldwide audiences that can create distorted images and messages to young girls about how they should look. Hence, "teenagers who are addicted to social media are more likely to engage in cyberbullying" (Kao, 2021). Ultimately, Teenagers experience immense social pressures from the internet, which are unrealistic, and photoshopped, and celebrities that create a negative stigma regarding how one should look and act to fit in, which relates to the article about how Instagram is damaging young girl's self-esteem and significantly impacts their lives. 




References

Gayle, D. (2021, September 14). Facebook aware of Instagram's harmful effect on teenage girls, Leak reveals. The Guardian. Retrieved October 20, 2022, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-aware-instagram-harmful-effect-teenage-girls-leak-reveals

Kao, K. (2021, March 30). Social Media Addiction linked to cyberbullying. UGA Today. Retrieved October 20, 2022, from https://news.uga.edu/social-media-addiction-linked-to-cyberbullying/

Standage, T. (2013). Writing on the wall : social media- the first 2,000 years. Bloomsbury. https://mylearningspace.wlu.ca/d2l/le/content/450821/viewContent/3065429/View



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