The Importance Of Removing Toxic Beauty Standards From Social Media Feeds. Do you feel like social media is affecting your self-esteem and sets unrealistic expectations from regular users? I know the feeling… and I’m here to help you discover the power of embracing real beauty and body positivity with our guide on removing toxic beauty standards from your social media feeds. Learn how to foster self-acceptance, promote inclusivity, and cultivate a healthier online environment for all. Start your journey towards genuine beauty today.
In today’s digital age, social media has become an integral part of our lives. While it has its benefits in terms of connecting people and sharing ideas, it also has a dark side – the perpetuation of toxic beauty standards. These unrealistic and unattainable ideals of beauty can have detrimental effects on individuals’ mental health and self-esteem.
It’s plainly obvious that there’s a link between our physical appearance and our mental health. In short, if we like the way we look, we feel a lot happier internally. Flipping things around and disliking our appearance can make us feel all kinds of negative emotions. We get anxious and depressed; we start to hate how we look and despise ourselves.
This all leads to a very dangerous negative spiral – which we’ll talk about later in this guide – but where does it all come from? Why do we look at ourselves and hate what we see? You never see animals look in the mirror and seem displeased at what’s staring back at them. Why is it different for humans?
Mainly, it all comes down to how we perceive ourselves in comparison to others. If we’re shown specific beauty standards or see the same type of people again and again, it makes us think they are what’s considered “beautiful” in society. This is made worse by the growth of social media, particularly on platforms like Instagram or Tik Tok.
Here, we scroll through our feeds and are shown images of slim women with perfect makeup all the time. We’re bombarded with these images, and then these women are heralded as “perfect”. When we look at ourselves, we don’t see these women staring back at us. Instead, we see all the ways in which we’re different.
As a result, we start thinking changes are needed – we believe we’re not “beautiful”.
It’s a terrible cycle that’s been happening for years, but what can you do to combat this? Changing the world is a big task, but you can take steps to cleanse your social media feeds of any toxic beauty standards. The aim is to have a feed that makes you feel good about yourself.
When you scroll through, you don’t have loads of negative thoughts or start to think you’re not good enough. We’ll go through some tips to do this in just a moment, but let’s begin by discussing why it’s important to remove toxic beauty standards from social media.
Why you need to remove toxic beauty standards from your feeds
If you look a certain way, and everyone else on your Instagram feed looks the same, it makes you think you’re different. You see countless skinny influencers with slim legs, toned stomachs, and perfect skin. They all look seemingly identical, yet you look at yourself and see major differences.
These differences are then perceived as “flaws” which leads to a range of negative emotions. The problem with this is that it can have a huge impact on your mental health and may lead to the development of long-term conditions. It’s no coincidence that women are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression when compared to men. Yes, there are unrealistic and toxic beauty standards for men too, but it’s always been worse for women.
Your mental health is no joke – it’s very easy to go down a terrible spiral when you start feeling depressed or anxious about how you look. Depression can lead to eating disorders, or you take extreme measures to make yourself look better. In turn, this can quickly lead to things like drug abuse.
Speak to an expert at a Dual Diagnosis Treatment Center, and they’ll explain an intrinsic link between mental health disorders and substance abuse. When one comes, so does the other, meaning you can potentially fall into a terrible situation where you’re ruining your life.
It sounds extreme, but this type of situation genuinely happens to a lot of young women. They see the same beauty standards and toxic advice on social media, making them feel terrible about themselves. The only answers lie in extreme diets, illegal substances, and who knows what else.
This is why it is so so so important to cleanse your social media feeds. You need to stop seeing things that make you feel terrible and start seeing content that gives you hope. In the US, we spend just over 2 hours a day on social media. Think about the impact 2 hours’ worth of toxic beauty standards will have on your health every single day. Then, consider the difference if this content was positive!
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How to remove toxic beauty standards from your social media feeds
Social media algorithms can be a good and bad thing. The bad part is, if your feed is full of unrealistic beauty standards, it’ll keep getting more and more accounts like that as the site thinks it’s what you want to see. The good part is, if you swap it around and fill your feeds with body positivity, you should see more of it. So, here are some tactics to help cleanse your social feeds once and for all:
Follow a diverse range of accounts
Make it your mission to follow influencers or people from different backgrounds with different body types. The more the merrier! When you constantly see different bodies on your Instagram timeline, you start to realize how different we are. Not only that, but you realize how beautiful everyone is with their different body types. It’ll give you a more positive outlook on yourself because you accept that everyone is different.
Find people with similar bodies to you
While diversity is key, so is representation. Make sure you follow plenty of accounts with similar body types to yourself. This way, you see a better representation of your body type on social media. It makes you feel way better about yourself because you see these people and think wow they’re stunning. Then it clicks in your head that you look pretty similar to them!
Block toxic accounts
A toxic account is any account that promotes toxic beauty standards. It could be someone who tells you all to exercise for hours a day every day and to follow really strict diets. It could be someone who encourages you to constantly wear loads of makeup every day or to undergo countless cosmetic surgeries.
Basically, if you see an account on your feed and don’t like how it makes you feel, block it. You won’t see it again, so your feed will slowly be filled with accounts that align with your way of thinking and your own personal beauty standards.
Final words
To summarize, toxic beauty standards on social media can have a hugely negative impact on your mental health. This has the potential to lead to dangerous spirals that may change your life and cause massive problems.
As such, you should focus on removing any signs of toxic beauty standards from your social media feeds. Fill your feeds with diverse people and body types, but make sure your own body is represented. Block accounts that drive bad messages and follow people that make you feel good about yourself.
Did you find this guide helpful? Do you find yourself bombarded with toxic posts that promote unrealistic beauty standards on social media and feel like is too much? I’d love to know your opinions, so drop a comment below and let me know what other solutions you have to remove toxic beauty standards from your social media feed.
