P.we come from positive news: in 2021, on social media, women have been able to create another type of narrative. Activists, artists, psychologists, jurists. Creators, diggers, disseminators. Sometimes “digressors”, in some parts of the world they even risk their lives. We are women, we are good at influencing, and if we put our deepest part into play, we move mountains.
As the Filipino journalist Maria Ressa, a petite woman, a giant. He is still on everyone’s lips for his speech at the retirement ceremony Nobel prize, in December, for the «commitment to safeguard freedom of speech». After denouncing the many journalists threatened and imprisoned in Hong Kong, Myanmar and the Philippines, he raised the alarm: “What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence“. Apparently the biggest problem in Silicon Valley is geopolitics. But this cry against violence, even if detached from the context, sounds good on several fronts.
The pursuit of “Social” perfection
People who can do 100 burpees (physical exercises) in 10 minutes. This was the pressing sequence he fed on Anastasia Vlasova when she decided to start psychotherapy. She felt she had an eating disorder and had a clear idea of what the cause was: time spent on Instagram. He had opened her first account when she was thirteen and now, at least three hours a day, she spent her observing the lives, bodies and works of others. To say of her “perfect”. Perfect for whom? Because?
Seen from afar, the lives of others seem to have a coherence, «A unity which in reality they cannot have, but which appears evident to the viewer. It is an optical illusion ». We need to bother Zygmunt Bauman, as Camilla Boniardi (31 years old and 1.3 million followers on Instagram) did in art Camihawke, during his Ted talk: «We perceive ourselves as incomplete, but the experiences of others appear coherent. This illusion is given by the distance that separates us from others “. Social media have changed who we are, what we tell, the way we do it, our daily life. All.
Women, social media and self-esteem
The story of Anastasia Vlasova, 18, of Reston, Virginia, is similar to that of many women, more or less young, and is the starting point of the article Facebook knows Instagram is toxic to young girls, corporate documents prove itsurvey published in a huge special of the Wall Street Journal. It aggregates unpublished evidence and materials, later merged into the Facebook Papersa maxi dossier that involved 17 American newspapersincluding the New York Timesplus some Europeans, such as the Financial Times And Le Monde. There is even a Google doc (available) which updates publications in real time. The topic is hot and there are still grounds for debate. Starting with the first, almost a syllogism, the most self-evident: are social media seriously harmful to women’s health?
The article starts from here and from the recovery of one internal research conducted by Facebook in 2019 which confirmed: “We worsen body image problems for one in three teenage women“. Hence the title of the dossier: Facebook Knows. Facebook knows. But, in this case, what do you know? We remember the first Instagram tests to remove the display of likes, a way to stem the problem. But now it is no longer just an active speech (the attention to the post I publish), but also a passive one (what I see when I scroll down). And how much the algorithm interacts with our conscience and sense of self-acceptance.
So we contact a spokesperson for Meta for Italy, which prefers not to be identified and admits: «We have been working with experts for years to develop support policies and tools. Searches like this help us to better understand people’s experience on Instagram and reflect on what to do to improve. We’re also testing new features to help teens be even safer, ways to encourage them to take an interest in different topics so they don’t dwell on the same thing for too long. ‘
There is more awareness
It must be said that, while Instagram is teeming with psychotherapists and counselors, and the new Age of Aquarius takes us more accustomed to working on us, the question becomes more and more tangled. The Baumian “optical illusion” (mentioned above) is an unconscious thought-form and gnaws, day after day, the most authentic part of us. Like a fog, it obscures the guardrail and prevents us from paving our cobbles. What distances us from? With us.
“The fault lies not so much with the medium but with how it is used. The important thing today is awareness. Many go to social media “to get distracted” or watch reality shows with the intent of taking their minds elsewhere. In reality emotions arise such as envy that we must learn to perceive, welcome and transform” explains Teresa BudettaMental & Business Coach on Instagram (15.8 thousand followers).
The other good news is that we still have time to center ourselves, lifting the veil of Maya and freeing ourselves from the illusions that limit our experience. The poetess Chandra Candiani he would say that we must go back to “practice not knowing and marveling”, hang up the iPhone, let go of concepts, look around, heal ourselves. Indeed, one of the less pleasant aspects of the story is the question seen from the perspective of the feminine, in its most authentic meaning. The search for Wall Street Journal for example, show how “32 percent of girls, when they feel bad about their body, feel worse after watching Instagram“. It is evident how social networks have changed the perception of oneself. Constantly being in front of perfect bodies has created enormous expectations, especially in women.
There is no perfection
But fortunately, the perception of the essence of the feminine, of the “moments”, of the “sacredness” is changing. «The hypothetical perfection and the infinite experiences of others can lead us to think that life is not difficult. This creates apathy, it reduces the desire to work hard to achieve a result “, he explains Pamela Antonacci, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, Moon Mother (a spiritual community of women, ed) e founder of the first female theater school The Goddess Incarnate. The challenge is to dissect the theme of the distortion of reality, because this is also a matter of: “The people who are more influenced by age or temperament (because it does not only happen to young women but also to the most mature) risk substituting experience real, with “life” in social networks, and therefore with a partial part of one’s own, or with the life of others. This is the greatest danger because it does not allow a woman to identify herself, which is the most beautiful journey. “Women are not born, they become one” ».
Who knows Simone de Beauvoir (she said that “it is largely the anxiety of being a woman that devastates the female body”) as the “Snapchat dysmorphia”the mental condition that leads to wanting to undergo surgery to look like the “improved” version of oneself that is seen through the filters of social networks.
The real is different
Yet it is not just about aesthetics, or geopolitics, but about a return to us. To our sacred fire. Antonacci concludes: «Horror vacui, being in the void, is a difficulty. Through social media there is a continuous apparent filling. The advice is to have real experiences, “take advantage of the medium”. If I suggest subscribing to dating chat, to get to know someone, I say: do it, you have identified the person, now go and really know them. The real is different and, until we experience it, we don’t put our deepest part into play. For us women it is vital, we should never forget it ».
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