Prime Time 7/8, Writing, Arbeitsheft

2 10 2 Fashion and trends 2.1 Text input Girls and social media: “You are expected to live up to an impossible standard.” One in three young women feels under pressure to present herself as having a “perfect” life on social media, a survey has found. In a poll by the charity Girlguiding , 35% of girls aged 11 to 21 said their biggest worry online was comparing themselves to others. We asked a group of young people to share their views on this. Maddie McGowan, 15, from Southampton: “I compare myself to other people all the time.” “As a young girl, I do feel I need to be perfect, and compare myself to others all the time,” says Maddie McGowan. “My sister is stunning, so I look at her and think I need to look like her. It’s so negative. In reality, people are perfect just the way they are. “Girls are on social media all the time and follow celebrities and friends. But everyone portrays their ‘best self ’ on social media and that’s often not accurate. People can use Photoshop and can change their appearance, and that only sets them up to fail when they imagine that they have to live up to an unrealistic image. “I think Instagram is the worst because it’s not live, so you can change pictures once you have posted them and you can buy followers. This creates the idea that someone is perfect as they have loads of likes and followers, but that is not always the case.” Evelyn Green, 18, from Durham: “The general attitude is, if this photo does not get many likes then I will delete it.” “I got Instagram and Snapchat in the past year and notice a lot of girls worry about comparing themselves with others online. For me, there is ‘fear of missing out’. You see other people’s lives and what they are doing. People only put good bits of life online, and, even though you know this, you still see their ‘perfect’ lives, and it reminds you that yours isn’t. “You get people who are famous for being on social media. Young people idolise them, but actually these social media stars have the same problems as everyone else.” Nafeesa Deen, 19, from Buckinghamshire: “I know two girls with eating disorders who have huge Instagram followings.” “Social media put pressure on you to go on amazing holidays and try out all these diets. It feels like you’re being sold a life and are expected to live up to a standard that is impossible to achieve. “In the summer there will be lots of photos of people on holiday. It becomes tricky, because you compare your body with those of other girls, and a lot of the time you don’t know their story. I know two girls, for example, who have eating disorders, who still have a huge following on Instagram. People post comments saying, ‘Your body is amazing.’ Reading comments like that does not help the girls who are experiencing problems.” Raheela Shah, 21, from London: “I have held enough back to not be as emotionally involved as others.” “I have had friends drop me a message to say ‘like my pic’ and I jokingly reply saying, ‘You are all in it for the likes,’ and that is true. There is a sense of appreciation attached to likes, which can be misleading because at the end of the day some accounts are fake. They will like pictures based on a hashtag. “Seeing stuff online does not make me change the way I feel about myself. I like flicking through social media but don’t upload that much. I don’t feel like I have put that much myself out there, but you can find me online. I have held enough back that I don’t feel too emotionally involved with it, but for other people that is not necessarily the case. “People my age are less enthralled by it all than the younger generation. I don’t even know what a ‘Snapchat streak’ is. Social media move so quickly that even over a five-year age gap it can be very different. I didn’t get Facebook until I was 15 as my mum was really against it. That has perhaps affected my experience, as I have not been in the social media bubble for as long as a lot of other people.” (Sarah Marsh, The Guardian, 20 September 2017; adapted and abridged) 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv