“People have always felt insecure due to society and media for the most part, but social media is a channel in which it can lead to an extremely unhealthy amount of insecurity compared to others. Especially when it comes to beauty standards and comparing yourself to others who are supposedly "normal people" just like you (and it normalizes celebrities who can afford to look the way they do via expensive clothes, makeup, surgery, etc).”

“Magazines, music videos and celebrities came before social media and before that there was aristocracy and high class. The problem is that anyone can use social media to paint their own picture, now everyone has their friends or other people their age looking like Instagram models when they’re just teenagers. This sets an unhealthy precedent for young people, who by far seem to be the people most negatively affected by social media. When developing brains have access to these types of standards completely unfiltered, then there is no stopping them from getting into dangerous ideas or habits to fit the mold.”

“I think social media is just another outlet for what's already there: the beauty industry benefits from selling products to insecure customers, as do health/wellness brands (especially those that use all forms of media––online, cable, print––to make claims directly tailored to people's insecurities). It's not a completely new paradigm, but rather a tool that allows marketers to collect and exploit personal data more efficiently. It makes the insecurity that most people already have more powerful.”

“When I would take selfies I always had to use a filter otherwise I wouldn’t keep the picture. It started to really make me hate my actual face so I stopped taking selfies altogether. I’m starting to like aspects of my face again.”

“Social media, specifically Tumblr's 'pro ana' community played a very large role in the development and worsening of my eating disorder.”