Unfiltered: Navigating Social Media's Impact on Women's Well-being

Today we are talking about social media and its impact on our health and well-being! 

In this episode, we share:

• The results of our poll of how social media impacts women’s health
• Our individual experiences with social media and our well-being
• Why we showcase our best selves on social media
• How the internet has changed over time
• A comparison of life before (and after) the internet
• Key insights from Brené Brown's podcast on Social Media, Morale Outrage, and Polarization
• Uplifting experiences as women on social media 

Real women, Real talk!

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Light Her Project podcast, Real Women. Real Talk. I'm Rachel Strella. And I'm Vixen Divine. Woohoo! So, for anybody who's actually physically watching us, you might first notice a few things. One, I have headphones. First time for everything. All right now. All right. Yeah. So hopefully this cuts down any chirping noise that you might be hearing that despite everything that we try to edit out. All right. So that's a great one. You might also notice that we have a new logo. So we're upgrading our brand a little bit, getting more sophisticated. Love it. Love it. So, you know, how's your week going so far Vixen? Okay. So my week is going fantastic. Can I tell you why? Can I tell you why? No. I don't want to hear any good news. Of course, tell me. I got great news. OK. So it's the little things they say, you know, they talk about. I ordered them. I'll show you probably next time we podcast. But everyone knows, like, I love purple, right? Love lavender, purple, that sort of thing. So one of the shopping networks, major shopping, I forget which one. Anyway, I'm up because I'm up at midnight. I'm up at midnight and I just happened to have it on. I just unplanned. They had mugs, like 40 ounce double walled, like the heat stays in for eight hours. It stays cold for 24 hours, but purple and lavender set. I was like, what? With the straw caps, like the whole deal. I was like. Oh my god, I have to have it. It is a small things. Like I swear to you, I understand. I do. Trust me. I'm excited because it is warm out for a change. Like it has been cold. It has been raining. The sun has been out. It's in the 70s. This is unheard of. I know, right? Aside from that, my week has been kind of odd. Like, you know, as women, we have to go and get screenings and things like that. And yeah, the dreaded, you know, mammogram came back not so great. So I got to go get more scans. So it's just that kind of stuff where it's never ending cycle of things that like, are just facts of life. Yeah. And you know what? It's the thing. It's the waiting. It's the not knowing. Like that is what gets you. It's not that there's necessarily anything wrong, because these things go weird all the time, but it's the little tiny percentage that maybe just a little bit like that, it will get you. It's Google that will really get you because I never heard of my particular issue, you know, and when I'm Googling it, you know, and they did the study and there's four to six times more likely to have breast cancer. Okay, I thought well that's interesting. So not exactly a fun way to go but no. We can get hit by a bus tomorrow. Dr. Google will get you every time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, on to more positive things, or maybe not, depending on our topic today. So we plan to discuss the effect of social media on our health and well -being. So to kind of get ready for this particular episode, I had us create a poll that I sent out to a bunch of women just to get kind of where they're at. Okay. So things like, you know, how often do you compare your appearance to others on social media? Do you feel pressured to look a certain way? Things like that. The results here weren't that surprising. At the end of the day, I mean, you're getting a lot of people that are in that middle of the road thing where they're feeling this often or sometimes. Not so much like always. And you do get some nevers. But I would say the over over 50 % are often or sometimes on how they compare themselves. And the same goes for the pressure that they feel to look a certain way because of what they see on social media. Did you say that was over 50 %? Over 50 with a combination of often or sometimes. Hmm, that's actually a little disturbing. Yeah. You know, that's telling me, hey, okay, ladies, we got to work on this whole self-esteem, self -positivity thing. Okay, but we'll talk more about that later. No, we will. And you know, one of the things is, you know, do you ever feel anxious or stressed while using social media? 58 % sometimes. So it's actually a little stressful. Cyber bullying. I was actually happy to see that the experience of cyber bullying and negative comments on social media and how they impact their mental health. Yeah, over 52 % said never. Oh, good. That's really good. There was like 37 % that said rarely and like a 10 % that said sometimes, but not an always or an often at all. So that's really good. Yeah, that's good. And we were split four different ways on how much, you know, they're spending time on social media rather than engaging in physical activities, you know. What, you mean they're up at midnight? Well, I mean, that's what I do. I personally like, I fall asleep on the couch a lot and then I'll wake up I don't know what time anytime between midnight and like 3am and I can't get right back to sleep. So it's time to scroll. Yep. Now I don't know what kind of physical activity am I going to be doing at two o'clock in the morning anyway, but I'm sure I could find other ways and what's funny because one of the questions is does social media interrupt your sleep vast majority says never. But if they're like me, where they wake up and then they're like, I can't get back to sleep. So I don't know if that interrupts it or not. That could be a couple of different ways because did it interrupt your sleep or while you're awake, while I'm here, well. There's nothing here that was super, super--I mean. One other thing I'll say too is, one of the questions was, do you feel like social media has a positive or negative impact on your life? And 85 % of people had a neutral response to that. So it was neither positive or negative. Okay, so they basically take it or leave it. It's not super great, super negative. Okay, well, okay. At least it's not negative. I mean, we had an opportunity to ask some questions to, you know, basically open answered stuff, you know, like, you know, what would you like to add about your experience? And some of the things we've got was, you know, overall, it's addicting. It takes too much of my time. It's a double edged sword, you know, it can be interesting and annoying as well. You know, it consumes too much of my head space. So there's, yeah, I mean, this is what life is now. Well, you know what though? Here's the thing, it's unpredictable. Like even though you have certain people that you probably frequent in your social media, you know, on your timeline, you still don't know what's gonna come next. So you can't predict that it's all gonna be positive, you know, coming down the line because you don't know what people are writing and you don't know what's gonna come in the next thing or. So it could be bad or you could perceive it as bad. So you just don't know. So it's unpredictable. So you can't keep it all happy and gay and woohoo, you know. It's not an encyclopedia. That's for sure. Well, let's talk about our personal experiences here. I talked a little bit about my sleep. You know, how is this affecting us and our impact on health? And what's funny is that, This podcast started because of feedback that I was getting when I posted about plastic surgery that I had in 2018. You know, where I had like a million views on the first video that I posted about it. And I think that one of the things for me, it's hard because I follow a lot of reality TV people. I love watching reality TV, it's a vice. And you know, I'll see these ladies from Siesta Key and I'm like, man, I want to look like that. Or I'll see the people from Jersey Shore who've all had plastic surgery and they look amazing, you know? But it's sometimes hard to like not compare yourself. And so for me personally, just on the physical aspect, there's not really a full way to escape that. There isn't a full way to escape that, but I think it gets a little dicey when you really want to be that. I saw this woman, she was, she had had surgery, if I'm not mistaken, but she wanted to look like what Harry, Prince Harry's wife, Meghan, Meghan Markle. And she had had some, like, when you start to change yourself to look like some, that person that you wanna look like, like it's different than you could say, oh, wait, wait, wait. I want the eyebrows like that she has, you know, and you're working, you know, that's different. You know, you got that picture of her brows and you're trying, like that's different. That's just kind of your, you know, like, oh, I want that. But when you get to that level, that's obsessiveness that you're like, I have to be, like, you don't want to be you anymore. Yeah. That's different. So I don't think it's bad to, cause as women, you know, like I said, I'm the one who go up, hey girl, where'd you get that purse? Those shoes look good on you. Oh, where'd you get them? You know, that sort of thing. Oh, girl, you look good in that dress. You know, I'm not afraid to say that, that kind of thing. So we're generally ones to talk about things like that and find out and try, you know, where'd you get that dress? I'm trying it on too. You know, try to be that, but we're not trying to be her. Right, right, right. Understood. So do you have any kind of personal experiences? From your perspective on how social media has impacted your health and wellbeing? It drives me nuts. I'm just going to tell you, it drives me, because I want it to be a certain way. And because it's not that way, it drives me nuts. Because every time I think I have it figured out, I don't. And thank God for your company, Strella. Because that really helped me for my consistency because I felt it to me, it's like a child who needs constant attention. You know, without any thankfulness. Yes. No, working in this field, I get it. And my perspective is obviously a little different because of that. I really don't want to be on social media during the day because I have to work in it. You know, and that's kind of a funny tidbit too. Like there's been times where there's the assumption that I'm on social media all day. And I'll have like, I've had people get really mad at me because they might've posted something that they assumed that I saw and because I didn't comment on it or I didn't reach out to them or react. They were like, man, you're a bitch. Like you knew I had that nose surgery and you didn't even comment, you know, or say anything to me. I was like, what nose surgery? I had no idea. There was like this assumption that I'm on there and I was just, yeah. So let's talk about, you know, one of the things that I think is interesting about social media is our best selves is how we really want to show up. And I, I think that we don't want to show up as like, you know, we've got pimples, our hairs all over the place. We're looking sloppy that day. Um, now on Tik- Tok I'll say it's a little different. Like the vibe there is a little more real, a little more like non polished, but overall, like even people that are celebs on Tik- Tok or like Tik- Tok stars, they never look bad. Even if they, they, they say that they look bad. Like you can't tell me they didn't put a little makeup on before they did that. So I think that we try to show up a certain way on social media. Um, and I think that that can be what contributes to this feeling of like, man, everybody else has this perfect life, perfect look. Well, you know, perfect is different for everybody. But I see what you're saying as far as the expectation almost to be have that more perfection side of you show up as opposed to the jean girl. You, it's your fault that I show up like this. I told you I would show up in a jeans and t -shirt if you let me, but you don't let me. See Rachel, y 'all keeps me in check. She really does. And I know she is the business and I'm a massage therapist. I'm all about comfort. I'm like, ooh. I'm like, is there something fluffier I can put on? And Rachel's like, no, you cannot come in your onesie. And I'm like, oh man okay. Okay. So it's a matter of, and also about that goes back also then to self -esteem because like me, like, oh yeah, you best believe I have a purple onesie. Okay. I have no doubt, but I will not like for me, I'm good. I will show up in that, but some people, like you said, they will always show up like this, because they feel like it's an expectation and they don't feel confident enough to be their comfortable selves. Absolutely. 100 % agree with that. You know, so there's discussion about like how the internet has changed. You know, so one example that I got from somebody on my team was like, in the past, like hate comments were taken so seriously. You know, and they're personal. But now it's actually kind of embarrassing because the people who who actually like made those comments, you know, are now the ones that are like being called out and they'll delete it. So that's an interesting kind of change. What do you think? Well, I think it's more of a what it depends on what they wrote in the first place. If they put the hate comments on, they're like trying to embarrass someone else. And this is generally what I see in this respect. They try to embarrass someone else, but turns out that people are calling them out for trying to be basically so perfect. Like who, who the heck are you to say that about someone else talking about how rude they are. There is a, what is his name? Oh, I might have wrong. There's an influencer. He's in the workout space. Like I could have this name wrong, but it's like Johnny Swole or something. He goes into gyms and he basically will call you out for bad behavior in the gym. And in some cases get you kicked out of the gym because he'll send the video like to the management of that establishment. And a lot of times they'll be like basically canceled because what they'll do is they'll videotape somebody doing a workout. And as weird as it might be, they're doing it for whatever purposes they're doing it for, you know, their own, but the person will talk about them, trying to embarrass that person. And then it comes, when he catches it, it comes back to them as far as bad behavior. And then they have consequences. That's the one that comes to, comes to my mind. But I think that it's very serious and people are trying to really think about it now before they post that. to make their, cause I'm not seeing as many of them as I used to, because I think people are realizing that this might backfire. Right. I'll say like when I posted my video, the first one about my plastic surgery, I had hundreds of comments and there was probably about a quarter to maybe a third of them that were not really nice. And what was great though was that the community kind of came to my rescue. Like if somebody really posted something horrible, that wouldn't even necessarily do with my video. somebody would be like, that's like, you're wrong. Like, you know, I mean, they would, they'd come to your defense for you. And I don't know that we were that evolved, you know, when the internet started out, like everyone's just like, gee, what do I even say? You know what I post? Well, it is a thing where I think people, it used to be just kind of the bad behavior coming out, but now actually I think people are beginning to speak up, you know, not letting the bad behavior stand more as they were letting it stand before. And some of it still does, but now I'm noticing that they are basically, like you said, coming and jumping in, giving their two cents as not letting it all be bad. Right. I agree with that. Making you justify your comments. Yeah. So we've been around before, you know, the internet was around. Like somebody on my team said, I'd love to know, you know, their thoughts about, you know, before and after, because she's only ever had the internet most of her life. And so like that shaped her views of feminism. So compare life as a woman before, you know, and during the internet. What does someone say we're older than Google? Which sounds really old, but we are. Yeah. But before the Internet, yes, you did not have all these other women which you would never meet. You would never see. You would never run into. You did not have them to compare yourself with. So all you had were the people in your classroom or the people in your block, people at the grocery store, you know, in your community, or if you travel, those people to compare yourself with. So it was a much smaller and, and they didn't, and if you didn't take a picture of them, you really didn't necessarily really a hundred percent remember what they look like, you know. But now you can just snap that picture and just post it into your photographs and like look at it all the time. And which is not good. It's just not good. So it was more of a freedom. I feel like it was more of a freedom. And even if you compared yourself to Susie down the street, you kind of didn't because likelihood is you didn't have her plastered on your wall. You know, I was one of the late comers with the internet. I don't think I got it to like, about my senior year. So what did I do? Like I read magazines, you know, like, I don't know if anybody remembers YM magazine, like that was like, that was like the young and modern, like, that was like the cool magazine that you read when you were 13 if you're a real grown up, you know, so like, that was what I compared myself to , because I didn't even feel like these were real people, because they're not people I would see every day. You know, it would be like, that's the standard, but. I didn't feel like it was anything I necessarily had to be held to. It's ironic that I say that because I look at these reality TV stars all day on social media and I'm like, man, I wish I kind of looked like that. Well, the difference too is in a magazine, remember when we used to like cut the pictures out of the magazine and paste them on your wall? Oh yeah. But you knew they were celebrities. Like they were celebrities and famous people. Like you knew those weren't, that wasn't Suzy down the street. Right. So you understood, but now they're taken with the persona that we're giving off on the internet of thinking that Susie down the street really looks like that. We're taking that freeze frame snapshot of Susie and putting that in our pictures and trying to be that because Susie down the street seems to look like that. But guess what? When you see her in person, she really doesn't look like that. Or even the fact that like, reality TV stars weren't stars 30 years ago. You know, they were just regular people and how now they've become idolized and they're celebrities. That's true. We didn't used to view people for really no reason at all. That's essentially what it is, right? You know... It used to be. The reality is that's true. I mean, okay. Say yes to the dress, for instance. All right. Say yes to the dress. Yes, it was an event. If you went bridal shopping for your dress with your mom, with your sister, and no one else really cared about it. Right. Right. Yeah, that's right. That's a there is a huge involvement all around from like the way that we're entertained to like the social media aspect of that like this just it's just way different but for a lot of people they don't know anything different now, you know, even now even though I've spent half of my life without the internet and half of my life with it. I don't know what my life was even like back then like I'm so this is life now. Yeah. That's true. So I don't think that I mean, as a comparison. Back then and to now, I think it was a more intimate experience. The life was actually a more intimate experience than now it's spread out not only in your community, but it is spread out throughout actually the world. Your life can, you can reach someone being in the United States, you can easily reach someone in India. Like with no, with just, what is it? WhatsApp. Right? It's pretty crazy. Yes. So we don't, in our podcast, we don't get into like people that are experts or anything like that here. But I will say that one podcast came to my attention. It was a podcast by Brene Brown and she interviewed Dr. William Brady. And the whole topic was about social media outrage and polarization, which is obviously kind of a great topic right now as we're entering another presidential election season. Yeah. And what he broke down was kind of complicated. But the way he broke it down was simple. And the simplified version of this is this. Like, when we post something online, and you get likes or comments, you know, that's quantifiable for us. And it's actually something that gives us a social reward. It's like, it's like Pavlov, the dog and bells way I kind of say it, you know, you get this reward because of the audience reaction. And that can actually, that's what can cause like moral outrage because it can get amplified really easily. And the social media algorithms, they amplify the stuff that's getting that traction. So the thing that got, that really got to me was that he said that the things that we do, you know, we're very sensitive to whether we're getting these likes or not, you know? And if you're someone, who has low self -esteem, for example, your ego is like fragile. So, you know, there's research that if you're sensitive, you're more sensitive to this social reward that comes with the platforms and you're the more insecure you are, the more susceptible to that social reward. So that's a generally pretty negative thing is that we're expecting that reward for whatever we're posting. It's true, absolutely true. Working with people with low self-confidence, that is a sign, that is true in the respect where some people need, it's almost feeding their attention. They need attention. Some people, and so that's why you see the, don't talk about me, but this is why you see these people. Like every five minutes, I swear they are. They need that social love. And they are waiting. They are waiting for you to say, oh, that looks good. Oh, blah, blah, blah. You know, and then, and if they don't get it, they, they feel really bad and they try and I'm noticing this. If they don't get it, they start taking clothes, their clothes off because they're looking for any kind of self esteem any kind any kind of boost from anywhere they can get it right and so if they're not getting it from... You know what they say sex sells sex sells so true and so they're getting it from that and they're like, oh well I'll keep doing this because this is giving me gratification. Yes! And that's and a lot of times we can get into it. But a lot of times that comes all that goes all the way back literally from how you were raised and what you were raised, the positivity or not that you were raised with. Absolutely. Well, before we end the podcast, one more quick question for us, I think, is if we could think of a positive or uplifting experience that we've encountered on social media as it relates to women. So for me, one of the things I'll say overall is that like, when somebody posts about something that's heartfelt, the community does come to your rescue. And that could be man, woman, it doesn't matter. There's a death in the family. There's something that you're struggling with. I find that and I think that's one of the best uses of social media. But one thing that sticks out in my mind is I have a friend who's amazing. I think she's amazing. She's got a PhD. She was the top of her company. She now owns her own business. But she's just dislikes how she looks, you know, and she posted on social media, you know, because she was at the beach and she was like, I really don't even want to show my tummy, you know. And everybody was like, Oh, my God, girl, you are so beautiful. Like, why would you even say that? You know, and this is somebody who is like a generally thin person. But these are the things that we feel in our head, you know, we don't like about ourselves. Yep. And it was great to literally see over a hundred comments of people saying, you know, don't think that way. Like you look great and we love you. That is a really good thing, but that happens to us all the time. We are our own worst critics. No lie. No lie. How many times has someone come to me and I'm doing a facial and they're like, right here, right here. And I'm looking at... I can get the magnifying glass. I'm like, I don't see it. I'm like, okay. But they see it every single time that they look in the mirror because we are our own worst critics and we are the hardest on ourselves. And honestly, it's what, stop the magnifying glasses. Like people don't walk up to you on a regular basis with a magnifying glass. Stop doing this to yourself in the mirror. It's just not necessary. It's, but we are, because of that, it goes back to that validation. But as far as having good positive things that happen on social media, my good positive social media thing, I think that I've ever had has to be... Family. The fact that I can share things about my autistic daughter. And even though she doesn't really realize what it is, like they seem to really, you know, back her up, go Taylor, you know, good things. And she smiles about it. And even though she doesn't really know a whole lot about it, but you know, she just likes it because, you know, grandma said it or Uncle Mike said it or, you know, that kind of thing. So she really likes that. So family, I think is the best thing. Honestly, though, I can give it, I can give it or take it, leave it, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I understand. I totally do. Well, this has been really great. And I'd love to hear from the audience . Leave us a comment about a positive or uplifting experience you've had on social media. That would be a really great way to kind of keep this community going. Well, I want to thank everybody for tuning into the Light Her Project podcast. I hope you like our new look. You can follow the conversation online with our hashtag. And in the meantime, keep it real. Real women. With Real Talk.